Career Relaunch®

As the global Covid-19 pandemic now enters into its third year, professionals are now beginning to return to their offices, daily commutes, and ways of life pre-pandemic. On the one hand, it’s encouraging that life is returning back to “normal,” but on the other, it feels strange that things just are going back to the way things used to be. At the very least, this pandemic should be a big wake-up call for us all to reevaluate whether the ways we were living and working before this pandemic can and should be the ways we continue to live and work moving forward.

Former corporate lawyer turned author and founder Eloise Skinner describes her own professional awakening catalysed by the pandemic in episode 81 of the Career Relaunch® podcast. We talk through the challenges of balancing multiple career endeavours, the seemingly inextricable link between our professional jobs and personal identities, and the importance of honoring your own values and interests no matter what others think.

In the Mental Fuel® segment, I also describe what I would consider one of the biggest professional tragedies of this pandemic.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel® segment, I talked about identifying at least one change you want to make in your career (or life) that you feel would allow you feel better about where it’s headed. Insist on having something that’s important to you that you’re just not getting enough of right now or at least keeping your eyes peeled for opportunities where you might find it.

Eloise Skinner is an author, teacher and existential therapist. She is also the founder of two businesses, The Purpose Workshop and One Typical Day. Eloise’s newest book, The Purpose Handbook, was released in late 2021. And the proceeds from this book are shared with Career Ready UK, the UK’s national social mobility charity. She also has a seat on their youth board.

If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

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Teaser (first ~15s): I think the pandemic removed so many things that I previously thought were unshakable that I started to re-evaluate what other things could maybe go without me missing them too much. That was when I decided I would just leave completely.

Joseph: We got a lot to talk about today. I want to talk to you a little bit about your career as a former corporate lawyer. And then, I know we want to talk a little bit about your book-writing adventures. But I was wondering if we could first of all start by having you just give us a glimpse into what’s been keeping you busy right now in your career and your life.

Eloise: [02:36] There’s been a few things. The biggest projects I have at the moment are writing my third book, which will be out next year. That’s a very big project which I’m working on at the moment. And then, the other thing is the business side of things. At the moment, my business is raising investment and that takes up pretty much all of my waking hours and some of my non-waking hours as well, thinking about that. That’s things like putting together a pitch deck, pitching to investors, and having lots of meetings. Those are the two biggest challenges at the moment.

Joseph:  What about the rest your life? Anything personally keeping you occupied these days beyond what sounds like it quite a busy work schedule?

Eloise: [03:16] It’s a very work-heavy time of life at the moment. Work moves in seasons. It comes, there’s very few seasons. And then, hopefully, towards the end of the year is when I’m thinking things will take a bit of a pause or at least there’ll be a season where things are less busy. Otherwise, I love to do things like fitness. I’m a fitness instructor. I teach quite a few Pilates and yoga classes. And, that as much as teaching. That’s a good part of my work. But it doesn’t ever feel like work because it’s also a personal passion. It’s something that kind of takes my mind off the other work that I’m doing and puts me into a different headspace. That’s something I enjoy outside of my main projects

Joseph: Can you just tell us a little bit about your businesses? Because I think you’ve got a couple businesses.

Eloise: [04:04] The first one is “The Purpose Workshop.” This is a business that is centered on working with people either one-on-one, or working with corporates, or working with educational clients, like schools or universities, just to help people find a sense of purpose. It’s based on my work in the field of existential therapy which is the training I have on the therapy side. It’s the idea that everyone has the ability to shape their life in any way that they want, people have the ability to find a sense of purpose in whatever situation they’re in. This is kind of the basic understanding of existential analysis which is the more academic side of things. The business is a very practical skills-based workshop to help people do that, that’s “The Purpose Workshop.”

And then, my other business is an ed-tech start-up, and it’s called “One Typical Day.” It is a video platform for students to figure out their first career steps. We showcase video content helping students get an insight into a day in the life of lots of different types of careers.

Joseph: Very interesting. It sounds like you definitely have your hands full with a lot of different things. I know that you haven’t always been an existential therapist, and you haven’t always been a founder of two businesses, and a writer of what’s coming up on your third book. Can we just go back in time a little bit and talk a little bit about how you got here? I know that you were originally working in the legal profession. Could you take us back to that part of your career, and then we’ll go forward from there? What exactly were you doing, and what kind of firm were you working for?

Eloise: [05:42] I had a very traditional career starting out. I studied [unintelligible] university. I always thought I want to be a lawyer. I was one of those annoying people at 14. That was like, “I know exactly what I want to do for my career, and this is the direction I’m going in. This is it. This is my passion.” I studied law at university, really loved it, really loved my law degree from the academic perspective, and ended up in the city training as a corporate lawyer. I did two years training contract, and then three years as an associate. I spent some time out in New York. I ended up specializing in corporate tax, which is maybe not the most exciting job title, but it connected for me with the academic side of law.

Most of corporate law, isn’t really about law in a technical sense. It’s more like the business environment, and the legal aspects of a business deal. It’s very much driven by market trends, and client demands, and what’s going on in the business world. But tax is a little bit more academic, so there’s a bit more what we would call maybe “black letter law,” the legislation, the statute books all of that stuff which apparently is what I love to do. That’s my legal work.

Joseph: You liked that part of the legal journey kind of being in what you called the “black books,” and going through statutes, and getting into the details of things. What did you think your career was going to look like in the legal profession, and then what ended up being the reality that you experienced?

Eloise: [07:12] It’s an interesting question because as a law student, even though you can think, “I really want to be a lawyer,” but you don’t know the reality of what that job is like in any respect until you get into it. Actually, at university, I thought maybe I wanted to be a family lawyer and someone doing divorce and child proceedings, and things like that. I did a family law internship, and I just didn’t connect with it in the way that I had expected to. I ended up in corporate law almost as a result of wanting somewhere that was very demanding, challenging environment. It was where a lot of my peers were going as well, and the culture fit was good at the firm that I ended up at. I felt that was somewhere where I could be myself and sort of challenge myself intellectually, as well as professionally.

Corporate law was a very long way away from my experience as a law student. As I said, it’s fairly business driven. There’s not a huge amount of legal study involved in it. I guess it was a huge difference from my expectations as a student. Obviously, the other thing is the time demands, being in corporate law on what on your life as a whole I guess, and the kind of work-life balance of struggles or challenges that you have to overcome.

Joseph: What kind of hours were you working at the law firm, out of curiosity?

Eloise: [08:31] The interesting thing about corporate law, in particular, is that, even if you’re not working all of the hours in the day, you’re pretty much available all of those hours. That’s the kind of nature of the job that can be quite challenging is this feeling of being sort of “on-call” or “on-demand.” As in you’ve got a work demand in the middle of your Saturday, you just have to go into the office and like drop whatever it was that you were doing. It’s that kind of unpredictability that was more challenging and more draining on a personal level than the actual hours themselves. A lot of firms in the city now are very conscious of well-being and work-life balance, and they try and do as much as possible to support you. But being in a very client-driven industry is just kind of the nature of the job and that is a part of it being responsive to anything that comes in

Joseph: At what point did you realize that this wasn’t maybe what you wanted to do the rest of your life? What triggered that for you?

Eloise: [09:24] It was more of a slow process of just other things being interesting to me. Too many competing demands to be able to do everything and to give my full energy and attention to everything. I’d already written a book back in 2019. It was my first book.

Joseph: While you were working full time at the law firm?

Eloise: [09:44] Yeah, exactly. It’s kind of like it was all my vacations, and like weekends for about a year and a half or something. It’s a pretty interesting decision, life decision. That book kind of opened my eyes to the possibilities of publishing, and being a content creator, and doing different things with my time. The more that I did other things the more I could see that it was going to be challenging for me to really commit to something, like 100%. Law is one of those careers that if you go for it and you want to make it to partnership or something like that, you are giving up your entire professional career to just do that single thing, not multitask, or have a portfolio career, or whatever it is. I got to a point where those natural crossroads that happen at some point during your career and you’re kind of thinking like, “If I continue down this path, it sort of shuts off other avenues. Do I want to take a moment to pause and figure out what to do next?”

Joseph: I know that writing a book is a major endeavor. What got you thinking about writing the book and what was the book about?

Eloise: [10:45] That one was called the “Junior Lawyers’ Handbook.” It was a handbook for junior lawyers. It was a professional development manual, so it was kind of an introduction to being a junior lawyer. It sort of evolved naturally from stuff I’d already been writing. When I joined the firm, I ended up putting together an internal kind of manual for the trainees that were joining, and I was just doing loads of professional development teaching, and helping out with training new lawyers, and stuff like that. That kind of evolved naturally into something more formal which became loads of articles. I was writing for a publication called “The Lawyer” at the time. And then, I was connected to an agent through a friend of a friend. We approached the law society. They wanted to publish it, which was amazing because they hadn’t published anything specifically for junior lawyers before. It was really exciting.

Joseph: Super exciting! And then, you’re working on this book, you published the book, you have an agent. At this point, are you still working at the law firm?

Eloise: [11:50] Yeah, that’s right. And obviously, all of my work on the side, my kind of writing and stuff, was all in the legal profession. In some ways, it was an extension of my personal brand as a lawyer, the work that I was doing within the legal community. It was very much connected to my professional role. When I got my second book deal in 2020, just before the pandemic. It was then at that point, where I could see the paths were diverging. Because as soon as I started to move away from the legal sector. that was when I saw more of a conflict between what I was doing as a lawyer, what I wanted to do as a writer.

Joseph: And so, you’re working on your second book. At what point do you decide that you need to completely cut ties with the law firm and focus 100% on these other side projects and endeavors?

Eloise: [12:44] The pandemic was a significant factor in choosing that decision. Had the pandemic not happened, I would have wanted to maybe still keep a little bit of my professional role in the legal sector somehow whether that’s like part-time or some kind of portfolio career. I had had some initial conversations about maybe going part-time or doing something like that doing the book alongside. I think the pandemic, as it did for a lot of us, it forced me to re-evaluate what do I want out of my career on a day-to-day level. Is it that I want to stay in law because it really fulfills me, or is it just because I’m too scared to just make the move into something else entirely?

The pandemic removed so many things that I previously thought were unshakable. Like that commute into the city, the city lifestyle, that kind of stuff, it was all gone so fast. I started to re-evaluate what other things could maybe go without me missing them too much. That was when I decided, maybe not even forever, but at least for a period of time, like a year or something, I would just leave completely.

Joseph: That’s really interesting, Eloise, because it seems like the pandemic was part of that awakening that you had. It almost showed you that life didn’t have to necessarily involve the commute, and maybe kind of reading between the lines here, but that maybe you didn’t need to have that be part of your daily life and there were other ways of working. Now, where does the founding of the new company then enter into the equation? How did you get that started and off the ground?

Eloise: [14:19] “The Purpose Workshop” really came from the book. That’s quite a sort of interesting and unusual way of founding a business. Because, normally, the business comes first, and then people write the business book to go with the business. But I could just see that the material was incredibly teachable, and I was doing it one-on-one. I just thought this is more scalable as a business. I started to kind of put stuff together made some online courses, sort of formalized the whole teaching process. The other business, “One Typical Day,” that was really more of a product of just listening to what students wanted.

So, as the book had sort of taken shape, I was speaking to a lot of young people about finding their purpose, and what they wanted to do for their careers. I could just see a gap in the market of kind of video-based careers content. I ended up on an accelerated program, and that helped me structure the business and put some market research and validation behind these ideas. It just continued from there really. It was a natural process of listening to people and seeing what they wanted, and seeing that there was a gap, and trying to fill it.

Joseph:  How was the journey of shifting from full-time work to working for yourself? Not only working for yourself but starting a couple actual businesses. Can you just describe the contrast in your day-to-day work-life?

Eloise: [15:37] Really challenging in ways that I have not even expected before. There are huge things that I feel so proud of myself for doing and ways that my life is so much more aligned now to who I am as a person, what I want to be doing with my time, and so much more autonomy about my hours and how my days are structured. At the same time, there’s a huge amount of anxiety about leaving a very stable, traditional corporate path and not knowing what comes next. Almost a sense of guilt as well. I kind of felt like I fell out of the structure that I’d had from my life. I just was floating a little bit outside of that structure. That was a weird way to describe it, but it felt kind of untethered or ungrounded for a while. Because my days have gone from being very determined by someone else’s schedule, meetings at this time because someone else says so, or client demands at this time because that’s what’s happening to me being completely in control of what happened and when.

With all of these projects, like the book, the businesses, the teaching, whatever, if those weren’t pushed forwards by me, they weren’t going to happen. And so, this whole like sort of weight of my career just landed on my shoulders, like really heavily. There are things that I’m just so grateful for, and things that are amazing about this time of life, and things that are also quite intimidating or stressful or just challenging in ways that I hadn’t anticipated.

Joseph: I’m hoping we can take these topics maybe one at a time here. First, of all just starting your own business, and then second of all, I do want to talk about your journey to get your book written and published. But, you mentioned that it was really challenging, this change. Can you describe just for maybe somebody out there who’s maybe thinking about leaving their full-time role, and is considering to start their own thing? The existence as a self-employed founder/entrepreneur/solopreneur, whatever you want to call it. Can you just describe what makes that so challenging?

Eloise: [17:44] One of the biggest things is the identity question, is your identity bound up in your role in your professional career. For me, it definitely was. Because not only was I a law student and someone who’d said like I want to be a lawyer since I was pretty young in my educational journey but also I was someone in the legal profession with a pretty clear personal brand and reputation. I wasn’t just doing my legal job in the day and doing other stuff by night, or at the weekends or whatever, but I’d also given a significant amount of my personal time to building a little bit of a place for myself in the legal world.

All my connections were in law, and my friends are in law, and all of that kind of stuff. That’s one of the things that’s challenging, is the process of unraveling your personal identity from your job title which is an interesting process. But once you do it is incredibly liberating because then you just feel much more connected to yourself, and a little bit more about who you actually are, separate from the day-to-day work that you’re doing.

Also, related to knowing your self is sort of figuring out how you work best. This is such a strange process if you have been employed for most of your careers, and you haven’t been self-employed before because you’re suddenly free to structure your working day however you like. It’s not something you get the opportunity to do when you’re in employment. And so, it’s like figuring out when am I most productive, when should I have my meetings, what time should I start work, what time should I finish work, you need boundaries, choosing when you’re going to socialize. It was weird because I have a friend who’s also self-employed, we just realized, “Oh! We could just like go to like an art museum or something on a random Tuesday afternoon.” It feels illegal to do something like that. Because it’s like, “What am I doing? I should be working in 9-to-5!” But suddenly, you realize, you’re actually not compelled to do your work in that way. If you’re not doing your best work during those times, then you can restructure your life to reflect that.

Joseph: Everything you just said, Eloise, resonates so much with me. The part about how our identities are linked up with our job titles especially when those job titles are quite neatly packaged, like lawyer, or I grew up thinking I wanted to become a doctor. It’s a lot easier to describe what a lawyer or doctor does versus somebody who’s got multiple endeavors, and passions, and interests. And so, that resonates with me. Also, this idea of just how to structure your workday, and we’re so programmed to follow this Monday through Friday, 9-to-5 routine. But you’re right, there’s not really anything that bounds us to that necessarily. I find I work quite well at night. That’s when I sometimes do my best work when the sun goes down.

This is also a good transition to talk about your book because it is about what’s called, “The Purpose Handbook.” I’m talking about your second book. It is about helping people understand how to design their lives. As much as I would love to get into the content of the book, I’m also very interested in how you came to publish the book. I heard once everybody’s got a book inside them, and for many people listening to this show, they’ve probably thought, “Yeah, maybe I could write a book.” Can you just walk us through a little bit of your process of how you ended up writing the book? It is a lot of work. How’s that experience been for you?

Eloise: A 100%. Everyone has a book in them, and I think everyone should write a book. I’ve been trying to encourage my dad to write a book recently. I’m like, “I think you can do it, and you need to do it.” People have these interesting stories to tell, and more books in the world is always a good thing. In answer to your question, it depends what kind of book you’re writing. I mean I have no idea how to write a novel. I’m just like totally in awe of people who write fiction. I have no idea where does that even come from. How do you imagine all of that? I mean that’s totally out of my range of expertise.

But, with a non-fiction book, it’s a very sort of almost mechanical process in a way like you can break it down into steps. You’ve got to write about something that you know. Something that you’ve worked with. Either something you’re experienced in, or a personal story that you have to tell or something you’re trained in, something you teach to people. A concept that you know well that you have something to say about. And then, you just break it down into chunks, like chapters.

From there, you’re just breaking it down into exactly what points you want to make, what evidence you want like. I know I’m making it sound like unmagical and like very boring, but it is almost a process of if you’re going to write a blog post, you think about what kind of points you want to make, what kind of structure you want to have, and then it’s just doing that on a bigger scale. Obviously, you have to tie everything together. You have to have a key narrative or something that runs throughout the book. So that you’re not just doing disparate chunks of content, but you’re actually telling a story even though it is a non-fiction book.

The most important thing is like knowing what you want to say to people. Sometimes books are written like I’m not quite sure like exactly what point the author was trying to make in it. The really valuable thing before you even start is figuring out what do people need to hear. From your audience’s perspective, what do they need to hear from you that they haven’t heard already? What new or unique content can you add to their lives to enhance their experience in life a little bit? And then, how can you tell that like what structure are you going to use?

Joseph: One more question about the actual book process. I know you’re saying you break it down, you kind of break it down into chunks. In terms of finding the time in the headspace to sit down and work on your book, how do you do that in a way that’s effective for you? I’m asking you this question because whether it’s a book or any other kind of project, you’ve got to have time and you got to have energy to do it. Where do you build that into your day?

Eloise: [23:39] Some people have natural kind of self-discipline to do stuff like this. They have a time every day where they just sit down. I’ve heard writers say, “I get up at 6 a.m., and I write until 9 a.m.” or do it really late in the evening or something. For me, I usually need an external deadline to really like do my best work. I need some kind of element of people depending on me. If I don’t do it, I’m going to get in trouble kind of thing.

Joseph: A little bit of pressure.

Eloise: [24:07] For me, it’s definitely always been a good thing. I’ve always had a publisher, kind of on my back with a deadline, and that has helped me to power through. It’s more difficult if you’re just doing it as a personal project, you only have yourself to depend on. In that case, I’d say maybe consider setting yourself a deadline, a self-imposed deadline, even if it’s flexible. You can say, “I’m going to have Chapter 1 done by this time. Chapter 2…” You’re holding yourself to some kind of timeline.

Joseph: That’s a good tip right there. It’s kind of making sure that you’re working towards something. And so, that you don’t have this infinite timeline where you just end up procrastinating which is what I sometimes often do. Before we talk about some of the things you’ve learned along the way of your career change journey, I did want to talk briefly about the book itself. Because it’s called “The Purpose Handbook, A Beginner’s Guide to Figuring Out What You’re Here to Do.” I’m just wondering, without giving away any spoilers of the book, for people out there who are thinking, “Gosh! I don’t know what I want to do. I know I don’t want to do what I’m doing right now, but I don’t know what I want to do instead.” Do you have any suggestions on where somebody might at least start?

Eloise: [25:21] The number one place to start is with yourself. Getting to know yourself before you start to figure out, “What do I actually want to do with my time?” A lot of the time we start sort of several layers detached from ourselves. We think what would earn good money, what would look good on LinkedIn, or what would sound good to tell my parents that I’m doing, that sort of thing. The trouble with doing that, which is how most people start out, me included, the trouble is sometimes you can do that and then follow a path that is a little bit disconnected from what you want to do as a human being in the world. I’d say start with your personal values. What’s important to you in the world? What kind of things interest you? What kind of things make you excited about waking up in the morning? They don’t have to be job titles. These could be sort of general principles, or concepts, or values, or even relationships with other people or anything really.

And then, make a huge list. Write down everything you could ever think of. Go back through that list and see if there are any things that are sort of integrated or any consistent themes that are standing out to you. That might be something like spending time in community, or being an extrovert, or talking to other people. From there, you can start to get the building blocks of what kind of careers would be good for those kind of passions and skills. But you’ve got to start with the personal stuff first, and then work outwards to the more like professional or practical stuff.

Joseph: Speaking of personal things and focusing on yourself, I would like to just talk with you about some of the lessons that you’ve learned along the way before we wrap up today. I was wondering if you could just start, Eloise, by telling me if you were to look back on your career change, what’s something that you wish you had known that you now know about changing careers?

Eloise: [27:13] The biggest thing is no one cares as much as you do about the change of careers. I was worried that making a big change in career would have everyone sort of questioning or saying like, “Oh, you’ve made a big mistake,” or “You’re walking away from something;” or “What are you doing? Do you know what you’re doing?” And those were all my own insecurities projected outwards. I just saw that no one noticed or minded too much if they were interested. It was because they were either thinking about it themselves, or they were inspired, or they were just curious, and no one told me that I was going to make a mistake, or no one seemed overly concerned, or anything. My big thing would be the person who cares the most is you. And, if you know it’s the right decision, worry less about what people are going to say or think. Chances are everyone’s thinking about their own careers anyway, and the judgment is probably mostly in your own head. If you have a strong enough conviction, that you’re doing the right thing, that’s the most important thing you can have.

Joseph: Very helpful. I know exactly what you meant. We’re so concerned with what other people are going to think. But at the end of the day, if you think about like how much do you really think about other people on a minute-to-minute basis, it doesn’t really — even your best friends it’s not like they’re in your mind every moment of the day. And so, you’re absolutely right about the fact that we sometimes overestimate how much people are paying attention to the choices that we’re making. The other thing I was wondering about is given the fact that you’ve been on this career change, and I’d say going from a law firm to founding your own company, and also by the way writing a few books on this, I’d say, that’s a pretty major career change. What’s one thing that you’ve learned about yourself along the way?

Eloise: [29:02] The biggest thing is that I just have a better sense of who I am now in the career change. I can see that my personality, going back to the identity thing, isn’t wrapped up with the idea of being a lawyer or like having legal skills or even working in the corporate world or even having a job at all. It’s shown me that I do know who I am, and I have quite a firm foundation in my own identity and passions and interests. I’m so much more than any kind of career label at all. Even if I do go back into the corporate world in some capacity, or go back into corporate law at some point, the real gift of this period of time has been to almost find this really firm foundation within myself that I can now rely on whenever I need to. Regardless of any career changes or developments that happen in the future.

Joseph: I’d be really curious to hear because it sounds like you have so many different things going on that you find so fulfilling right now. We talked about some of the challenges of making the changes. What do you enjoy the most now about the kind of work that you’re doing?

Eloise: [30:09] The idea of making an impact is just really, really exciting to me. That was maybe something I was missing in corporate law a little bit was this sense of shaping the world in the direction that you want it to go in. Being a sort of business owner and being someone who’s actively putting content out into the world is, as you know as well from your own experiences, you feel much more connected to the stuff that you’re doing. Your impact is right there and it’s much more tangible than it is when you’re working in a big corporate firm where you rarely see the outcome of the work that you’re doing in terms of a sort of impact in the world.

The idea of making a social impact and sort of changing things in the way that I believe they should be changed towards social mobility, accessibility, diversity, and all of that kind of stuff. That gives me so much energy to continue to push in the businesses, and also with the books and stuff. That’s the biggest thing.

Joseph:  Well, speaking of impact, Eloise, I want to wrap up with the book itself is not just a book. I don’t know that some of the proceeds go to a very good cause. Can you tell me a little bit more about where the proceeds go from your book, and I guess you’re also involved with something quite interesting on the side? In addition to everything else you have going on.

Eloise: [31:20] The proceeds of this second book, part of the proceeds, go towards Career Ready UK, who are the UK’s national social mobility charity. They do some incredible work with young people, giving them expanded horizons and inspiration for the careers that they can have, and also practical skills workshops, that kind of thing. And, just preparing students from all different backgrounds to the world of work which is such an important thing. Coming from a different background myself to most of my peers when I ended up at university, it’s just something I believe in a lot and I’m very passionate about the idea of everyone being given an equal start in life. Everyone’s starting from the same place, and being taken by your drive and ambition in any direction you want to go in. They’re doing some fantastic work, and I’m excited to be involved with them.

[32:09]

How can you get your foot in the door of a new industry if you don’t have the traditional credentials, experiences, or education required? Brad Stewart went from being a tattoo artist to a real estate professional to a marketing manager in the financial sector in spite of lacking the formalised experience or education of most other candidates. In this episode of the Career Relaunch® podcast, we’ll discuss how he pulled off his major career changes by overcoming judgment, imposter syndrome, and adversity along the way. I also share some thoughts on how I manage the opinions of others during my own career transitions.

At end of the Mental Fuel segment, I mentioned a quote from Baz Luhrmann’s “Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen” song, originally from Mary Schmich’s 1997 Chicago Tribune article. Here’s the full music video:

https://youtu.be/sTJ7AzBIJoI

During this episode’s Mental Fuel® segment, I talked about the importance of thinking critically about whose feedback you take on board. If you’re struggling with how to navigate your career transition, definitely solicit the opinions of people you admire, but when you do, sense check it against your own gut and what you feel is ultimately going to make the most sense given your specific situation. This is your journey, so do what you feel works best for you.

00:00:00 Overview

Brad Stewart has had quite the career journey. He left high school to spend a decade in the tattoo industry as a tattoo artist, working at and managing various shops around Sydney, Australia. He lived & breathed the lifestyle. We’re talking gangsters, parties, drugs . . . you name it. He describes his late teens and early 20s as quite a wild time in his life. Then, at the age of 27, he did a complete 180. He went through two years of intensive laser tattoo removal as he pivoted into a career in real estate, which was part of his total life transformation.

After 5 years in the property industry, Brad gained some marketing experience by taking an entry-level job at a ticket-selling company. Eventually, he landed a job in the financial services industry where he currently works as a marketing manager for one of Australia’s largest retirement funds. Follow Brad on LinkedIn and Instagram.

If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

Thanks to Belkin for supporting this episode of the Career Relaunch® podcast. Belkin provides portable accessories that deliver power, protection, connectivity, audio, and productivity solutions. Whether you’re at home, in the office, or on the go, Belkin empowers people to get more life out of every single day.

Music provided by Podington Bear

Teaser (first ~15s): I would go through a full 45-minute, hour-long interview just for them to turn around and say, “We love the way that you are. You’ve got a great energy about you. You speak really well. We’ve got no doubt that you’ll do really, really but you can’t have a job with us because of the way you look.”

Joseph: Let’s dive right in here. I would love to start by understanding what you’re focused on right now in your career and your life. Then, we’re going to go back in time and talk about your very interesting career journey from there.

Brad: [04:25] I’m from Sydney, Australia. As your listeners could probably tell by the accent. I’m married. I’ve got a lovely little family, two beautiful chihuahuas, and a cat here. I’m currently a marketing manager for a superannuation fund. Superannuation is the Australian equivalent to the 401(k) that is over there in the states. When an employee has a job, they get paid a salary. On top of that salary, it’s compulsory that the employer pays an extra 10% in superannuation. That superannuation goes to a fund. We manage that money on behalf of that particular member. We make sure that their returns and their retirement outcomes are the best that they can be. They can draw down on that money in the form of a pension or a lump sum when they retire. It sort of helps them in their older years.

Joseph: You mentioned that you’ve just recently married. You guys got married right at the start of when COVID kicked off. How’s that been like? How’s married life been during COVID?

Brad: [05:41] It’s been really good. It’s been great. We were due to do something in 2020 when COVID first hit. We decided to hold that off and see what happens. My partner’s got quite a big family, and we would have loved to have a beautiful celebration as everyone would. But, when we sort of hit the start of 2021, and then things weren’t looking like they were going to go away, we decided to basically just elope here in Sydney. We woke up one day and decided, “Hey! Today’s the day;” and away we went, just her and I. It was beautiful. We’re coming up to 12 months now. Married life is bliss, Joseph.

Joseph: Very good to hear. You mentioned you’re working at a superannuation fund right now, in the space of retirement planning that is very different from what you started doing at the very beginning of your career. I was hoping we could go back in time and talk about the chapter from your teenage years through to your late 20s when you were a tattoo artist. I think it’s probably fair to say that that’s probably not the very first thing that most kids would say they want to do when they grow up when you ask them what they’re going to do when they’re going to grow up. How did you get into that? We can move forward from there.

Brad: [06:58] Growing up, Joseph, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I sat in school, and I went through school, didn’t particularly want to be there. I had a lot of anxiety as I hit my early teenage years thinking, what am I going to do when I leave school? I have no idea. You know people that they grow up wanting to be policemen. They grow up wanting to be firemen, doctors, whatever the situation was, and I just had absolutely no idea. I ended up hanging out with a couple of kids around the neighborhood, who, one in particular’s older brother owned a tattoo shop. That whole lifestyle of tattoos and big tough guys, and that whole scene for an impressionable 15-, 16-year-old, not having much direction with where they wanted to go, seemed quite appealing. It’s something that I kind of just fell into, if that makes sense. The more I sort of immerse myself in that lifestyle, I had a natural talent for art that I didn’t realize I had until I started in that particular role. I fell into it, and it just kind of snowballed from there.

Joseph: This was during high school, is that right? That you left high school to pursue tattoo?

Brad: [08:22] Yes. I left school at the end of year 10. It was just before I turned 17. I started working in a shop, in a place called Parramatta, which is here in Sydney. It’s probably the second-largest city in Sydney. I started my apprenticeship and away I went.

Joseph: Were you thinking that you were going to leave high school when you started high school? Were you planning on finishing? Is that something that was crossing your mind on?

Brad: [08:55] No, I always wanted to leave. School for me was just a place I had to go. I wasn’t a naughty kid or anything like that, but I just didn’t want to be there. I was just disinterested in school. I had the issue on the other side. It was like, “Well, what am I going to do if I’m not here?” I sort of found a job in a shop, and that was an excuse for me to get out of there.

Joseph: You get into this world of, let’s call it broadly, “becoming a tattoo artist.” I know you sent me a few articles before we spoke today about the scene in that industry. Can you just give me a glimpse into just what the scene is like in the tattoo industry and working at a tattoo shop? Part of the reason why I ask, Brad, is like you and I have met virtually on camera. You probably can tell I’m a fairly clean-cut guy. I have to admit, I’ve never stepped foot in a tattoo parlor. What’s that world like?

Brad: [09:57] It’s different. I think since I’ve left, things have somewhat changed and cleaned up a little bit. The industry in Sydney is essentially run by outlaw motorcycle clubs, so biker gangs. To own a shop, you need to be in a bike club, or you need to be paying someone in a bike club. Along with that comes the consequences. I know some of the articles that I sent you across back from when I was working in the industry where tattoo shops getting shot, firebombed. I think I sent you one.

Joseph: Rammed with vehicles.

Brad: [10:39] A car was rammed into a front of a shop and set on fire because they wouldn’t pay their stand over money that they were told they had to pay in order to operate. That was fairly common. Something would happen like that on probably a fortnightly basis in Sydney. It was a dangerous industry to be in, and it was a dangerous workplace to be in. I know that there was a particular shop that I was working at in Western Sydney. Once every couple of weeks, the boss would walk in and he’d say, “Lock the back door. Lock the front door. Don’t let anyone in except your customers because all that’s going on, and we might get a knock on the door.” It’s a very dangerous environment to be in. It was an environment where if you didn’t have your wits about you, and you weren’t very aware of your surroundings that at times, you could have got in a lot of trouble.

Joseph: Was this something that you felt each and every day? I guess what’s behind my question is the average person who comes on to this show is not someone who works in what we would consider a dangerous industry. Did this bother you at all? Did it just seem like what was normal in your world?

Brad: [11:52] When I first got into it, I was attracted to that sort of lifestyle. The whole ego image that you’re projecting, that people I’m working in a tattoo shop and hanging out with these kinds of people. It’s one of those things that made me puff my chest out and be proud of. There was a time when I was about 22, it was a couple of days before Christmas, where the boss that I was working for at the time had upset somebody. I worked in the same shop in Parramatta that I started in. It was upstairs, it was on a street called “Church Street.” Anyone in Sydney knowing Church Street, Parramatta is it has very, very busy restaurants everywhere. A bunch of people walked into the shop, and they smashed the entire shop. They smashed me up with the shop.

I don’t remember a whole week of my life after that. From that point on, there was probably maybe three to six months, I took a break from the industry after that because that was something that kind of really opened my eyes and sort of shook me up a little bit. But, once I got over that, nothing bothered me after that, in a weird way. That happened, I took a little bit of a break and just did some odd jobs here and there to pay the bills and so on. It was like if that didn’t stop me, nothing will. I was totally fine after that.

Joseph: At this point, you’ve been in the industry for a few years, and you have this happen. You decide you’re going to stay in the industry. Before we talk about your transition, can you also give me a glimpse into who was your clientele like? Could you give me a sampling of the types of people who would come into your shop to get tattoos?

Brad: [13:42] It was everybody. It was anybody from your 18-year-old guy who wanted to get tattoos to impress the girls and impress his mates, to mothers who had lost children, getting small little memorial tattoos, to people in biker clubs who wanted to get a lot of tattoos as well. It was very varied. I would tattoo policemen, doctors, and a lot of people that are in the corporate environment now, as well as people that you wouldn’t expect. I tattooed a love heart on a lady in her late 70s, who I remember being my oldest client. She just wanted to do it, so she got a little love heart on her upper arm. It was a varied clientele, no particular demographic.

Joseph: As someone who worked in that industry for over a decade, do you feel like there’s any common misconception that people have about tattoo artists or tattoo shops that you feel you could just dispel right now?

Brad: [14:45] Probably not tattoo shops, but tattoo artists and people with tattoos. There’s that stigma where if you’re covered in tattoos or you’ve got a lot of tattoos, you’re some kind of horrible criminal or some kind of a really bad person, or whatever the case might be. But, everybody gets tattoos. I said to my mother when I came home with my first really visible tattoo, I said, “If this is the worst thing I ever do, you should be happy.” It’s a reflection on who you are. People are putting on their bodies things that mean a lot to them, that represents them. It’s a way people tell their story of their life and who they are through pictures on their body. The rumor that I would dispel is that people that have tattoos are bad, horrible people which is just not the case.

Joseph: I’m one of those people who is probably somewhat judgmental with people who have tattoos. I don’t know why. It’s like a stereotype.

Brad: [15:46] For what reason though? I mean, if you look at these shows on TV and these news reports.

Joseph: Prison Break, or something.

Brad: [15:52] Prison Break. Even like reality crime shows, and Australia’s or America’s Most, there are always tattooed people against us. They’re always tattooed and there’s that stigma. It’s the normal people that also enjoy looking that way and doing those kinds of things that are totally normal. It’s a funny one because even myself now, I often look at some people and go, “Oh God! I don’t want to walk past you.” And then, I kind of look at myself and go, “Hang on a minute. What are you doing?”

A funny story was my wife boarded an Uber once. She refused to get in it because the Uber driver had a sleeve tattoo and had a tattoo on his head. She goes, “I don’t want to get in the car with him because he’s covered in tattoos.” I said, “Darling, look who you’re married to.” There is always that stigma there. It’s very hard to get rid of.

Joseph: You’re working in the tattoo industry from your teenage years through to your late 20s. That moment you shared earlier when you got beaten up in the shops and the shop got kind of ransacked, but can you take me back to the moment when you did decide, “Okay, something’s got to change in my career”?

Brad: [17:15] It was a culmination of things. I was in the industry for circa 10 years at the time, and I was looking at older people, older tattooers that had been in the industry for 20, 30, 40 years. I was just starting to observe as I got older myself, and started to mature a little bit myself, how I wanted the rest of my life to pan out. There’s no better way than seeing how you’re going to turn out. I don’t think than seeing the way the people around you are or have turned out. For me, it was a decision that I literally woke up one day and made the decision that there was more to life for me. I wasn’t interested in doing this anymore. I wasn’t interested in being around this environment anymore, and I made the decision to change. There was no catalyst. It was just a build-up of probably 6 to 12 months of seeing this person over there, seeing that person over here, and just saying, “I don’t want this life anymore.” I want more.

Joseph: What did you do next when you realized that you wanted to make a change?

Brad: [18:31] I started to change myself. I always had the short Mohawk haircut. I was always someone who never really took a great deal of pride in my appearance when I was in that industry. I started by making some changes to myself. The way I dressed, the way I’ve had my hair, the way I spoke, the way I interacted with customers, just to bring myself a level above what I was previously. The big decision for me, Joseph, was, “What am I going to do?” By this point, I had tattoos on my hand right down on my fingertips on both hands. I had tattoos right up to my chin, all along my throat, my neck. I’ve got tattoos on my head. I kind of sort of thought, “What am I going to do for the rest of my life?” I’ve made the decision that working in the tattoo industry isn’t it, but what is?

I started to research what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I sat down one afternoon, and I went on Google. I googled something along the lines of “What job can you do where you don’t have a qualification that pays a fair decent salary?” Bearing in mind, I have and still have no formal qualifications, no university degree, or college degree, or anything like that. I’ve got a couple of little certificates here and there that I needed as part of my career transition, but what am I going to do? The one role, the one industry that kept popping up was real estate, and that was it. It had to be real estate.

Joseph: How much did the education come up as a barrier for you? Not having the high school education, not having the college degree. Was that an issue or was it not so much an issue?

Brad: [20:17] It’s proven that it hasn’t, so far. I think the higher I get up in the corporate environment, I think it might become somewhat of an issue. Especially nowadays, a lot of it’s about your output, and about results, and about what you can do, and your ability and willing to learn. So far, I haven’t been held back by not having any formal degrees, and I’m hoping that’s going to continue. I have to see how that one goes. I’ve had some different feedback on that. Some people are saying you will need to do something or you’re only going to get to a certain level without it. But, we’ll just have to see.

Joseph: Real estate popped up as an option. Can you take me through exactly how your first opportunity panned out in real estate? I know you mentioned that you were covered in tattoos. I’d be interested to hear how much that played a role in your first job or attempts to get a job in the real estate industry.

Brad: [21:13] I ended up googling every real estate agency in Sydney. I ended up then emailing just about every real estate agent and agency in Sydney that explains who I was, what my background was, how I looked, what I was hoping to achieve by changing industries. I just sort of shot that out to everybody in the hope that somebody would come back to me and say, “However, [unintelligible], you can have a job with us.” I got a lot of responses. Some responses I got pretty instantly were, “No, thank you. We’re not looking at hiring.” Some were, “If you’ve got tattoos, this isn’t the industry for you.”

Joseph: That was because of your appearance that they were saying no to.

Brad: [22:04] Because of the appearance. I got interviewed on many occasions. I would probably say maybe 8 to 10 agencies called me in for an interview. Here’s me, putting on my suit and tie, and thinking, “I’ve got a real shot at this.” I would see it go through a full 45-minute, hour-long interview just for them to turn around and say, “We love the way that you are. You’ve got a great energy about you. You speak really well. We’ve got no doubt that you’ll do really, really well in this industry, but you can’t have a job with us because of the way you look.” That happened multiple times. Luckily, I’m stubborn. I know what I want and I’m a bit stubborn, so I didn’t let that stop me. I just kept pushing, and eventually found an agency that gave me a shot which was really, really good. But, that issue of the way I look never went away.

My first day with this new agency, again in Parramatta, funnily enough, I walked in the front door of the office on my first day. I said hello to my boss, and he gave me a key instantly to the back door and said, “When you enter or leave the office, can you do it through the back door? Because I don’t want my clientele seeing you with all those tattoos at the front of the office.” He gave me a desk at the back of the office. My role was basically on the phone. There was no sort of face-to-face interaction, and like I said, I was to enter and leave through the back. He often said that I was a little bit of an experiment for him just to see whether or not someone that looked like me could do any good. I ended up doing okay which was interesting. I eventually ended up getting face-to-face in front of real-life clients that the way I looked was quite refreshing to them because real estate agents, they all kind of wear the same cheap suits and drive the same flashy cars. And then, here’s me with tattoos on my neck and on my hands and had a really different look than what everyone else in our area had. I was definitely memorable, Joseph.

Joseph: I’ll bet, yeah. You’re working in residential real estate at this point in time. What was the journey like for you once you got past the initial resistance to things like your appearance, or maybe the lack of education, or things like that?

Brad: [24:33] It was a great one, Joseph. I did learn a lot about who I was as a person. I was making 2,500 cold calls a month by that stage. I was able to get out into the open and into the public. I was knocking on 50 to 100 doors a day, asking strangers if they wanted to sell their houses. I learned a lot during my time as an agent about things like resilience, how a business worked. I was learning a lot about how to get people, how to influence people to do things. I was learning how to sell. I was learning how to sell myself. I was learning how to sell a product. I was honing those skills of people management, stakeholder management. Trying to make sure I was engaging at every step in the journey, presentations, developing strategies. I was putting in the groundwork of what would be my current role now in marketing. I didn’t really have a purpose to be there, if that makes sense. I sort of fell into it because that’s the only thing I felt I could do at that particular time. I didn’t really have a why and why I wanted to be in the industry. It was just, “This is all I could do.” It’s something I wasn’t overly passionate about. But, I would go back and do it again because it’s laid an outstanding foundation for me to be able to build on for the rest of my career.

Joseph: What triggered you to then start to explore other sectors? I know that you eventually moved into financial services. How did that come about for you?

Brad: [26:13] In real estate, it’s a very tough industry in terms of you’re not paid a salary. You’re on commission only, which means if you don’t make a sale or find a listing, you don’t get paid. Along with that comes the cutthroat culture in a particular office where you’d be, in some instances, fighting with the person on the desk next to you about who’s going to get the particular listing or who gets to make the sale. If you’re not in that industry for a very long time, you don’t get the opportunity to develop that clientele and develop those relationships. If you’re not in an office that supports development and growth, and you’re in an office that’s focused on nothing but numbers, it gets to a point where you’re not doing very well, and you are sort of bound by market forces and other different things. So, the market will go up, the market will go down, nobody will sell. Then all of a sudden, it’ll roll over again and there’ll be a lot of properties on the market for sale. For me, financial securities are really important thing, and I wanted to be in a role where I had a steady income and a steady salary. I also wanted to be in an industry and have a role that had meaning to it for me.

I started to enjoy the more marketing and strategic side of real estate, more so than the interaction with people and the sales. For me, it took probably again 6 to 12 months to try and understand where that lay outside. As I mentioned before, financial security is quite important to me. My parents were self-employed. Growing up, I saw my dad get up and go to work every day to make sure that we could pay for the roof over our heads. He’d get up at dark and come home at dark. Seeing that as I was growing up made me feel a lot about financial security and wanting to help people be financially secure, which led me to financial services.

Joseph: I’m listening to your story here, Brad. First of all, it’s very impressive that you’re able to make these moves from the tattoo industry into working in real estate, and then eventually into the finance industry. Did you find anything, in particular, to be challenging along the way? I’m thinking in particular about just being new in a brand-new industry. You’re the newcomer and you don’t necessarily have the traditional kind of linear background most people might have in that industry. Was that ever a challenge or an issue for you? I’d just be curious to hear about that because it’s something that comes up a lot with people who are moving into new sectors or roles or functions.

Brad: [29:26] They’re extremely challenging. There’s not been a move that I’ve made that hasn’t been challenging. There’s two big points, right? The first point was moving from tattooing into real estate. That was challenging because, not only a career change, that was a whole lifestyle change, right? I cleaned up the entire way. I live my life. I changed my circle of friends. I changed the way I spoke. I changed the way I look. I changed the way I interacted with people. I changed what I did for a living. Probably, the change into the change of jobs was probably the easiest change as opposed to the rest of my life that I had to change along with it.

Moving from real estate into the marketing world was a big challenge, and a challenge I kind of still face today even though I’m in a position where I feel like I’m supposed to be. The marketing world, as you probably know yourself, it’s very much based on experience. Not having that qualification, not having in real estate, the formal marketing experience, even though a lot of what we did in real estate was marketing. To get into financial services, I needed, as silly as it sounds, I needed at least 12 months with the word “marketing” in my job title. What I had to do was go from that time in real estate where I was doing okay. I was kicking goals. I wasn’t setting the world on fire, but I had a level of a reputation around the area as someone who knew what they were doing was fairly competent and I didn’t have any issues in that regard. To looking for an entry-level job purely because it had the word “marketing” in it, which would allow me to take my next step.

Taking a step backwards to go forwards was really, really tough. I had to do that twice. I had to do that moving into marketing. I went into an eCommerce sales-based business where we sold tickets to events and I had to move right back to the start, do almost a 12-month apprenticeship for it to be formalized. And then, take that same entry-level role into the financial services industry where I could get 12 months of financial services experience before I could take a step out and get into an actual full-time proper marketing role. That whole transition was probably the toughest point of my career so far, I think.

Joseph: I can imagine. I’m just thinking that with each of these steps, it sounds like you were just patiently and persistently progressing in the direction that you wanted to go. Did you deal with any sort of imposter syndrome along the way? And if so, how did you manage that with each of these steps?

Brad: [32:26] Imposter syndrome. It’s something that I even faced today. It’s something that I’ll have for the foreseeable future. I think a lot of people have that. The fact that I had such a different background. The fact that I looked the way I looked, especially moving into real estate. Having those naysayers who said, “You’ll never get anywhere. You’ll never do well because of the way you look. People don’t want to talk to you.” Things like that always play in the back of your mind. When you’re sitting in the living room, and the mother and a father who were looking at selling their family home, I often thought, “Are these people not going to give this to me because of the way I look?” I always felt like I didn’t belong where I was.

Moving into the business outside of real estate, that ticketing business. I felt like I didn’t belong there. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I felt that I was supposed to be somewhere else because I knew that I was worth so much more than what I was in that particular business. Then moving into financial services, I took another step back and kind of felt like, “I’m in a real business now. This is a business that manages a lot of money, has a great responsibility that comes along with this particular role. I’m under-qualified. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m going to get a lot of mischief here because I’m going to get found out and all these particular things that you worry about.” At the end of the day, I’ve got a great support network, my wife. She’s unbelievable. She really puts things into perspective for me and she just said, “You know what you’re doing. You’ve got all the experience. Just back yourself and you’ll be fine.”

Once I realized that’s just the anxieties of the change, that’s probably all normal. I felt it more than most. But, sitting back, understanding where I was looking at things logically, instead of emotionally, I was really able to sort of just calm down and take it step by step. Now, things are working out well. I still feel it now and again. I try to overcompensate with things that I do to make sure that I’m always on the front foot with things. Using a lot of initiative and starting new things and going above and beyond in that particular role just to prove a point, “Here I am. Here’s what I can do,” which helps me mentally. It’s been tough at certain points.

Joseph: I want to wrap up, Brad, with a few of the lessons that you’ve learned along the way of your very interesting career journey. I suppose the very first thing that comes to mind for me is just thinking about how radically different your world and your work was as a tattoo artist versus what you’re doing now in the superannuation fund, in the marketing space. What, if anything, did you learn during your days as that tattoo artist that now shows up in your daily career or even your life right now?

Brad: [35:32] That’s a tough one to answer because the craziness of that tattoo world became normal. Since I’ve moved on from there, I try and block a lot of it out. But, a lot of the things that I learned back then that I’ve been able to use now is how to deal with people. That whole self-awareness piece. One minute, I might have been tattooing a mother who had lost a child and was upset and was getting a tattoo as a memorial to that particular event. And then, my very next appointment after that might have been someone in a bike club who was really, really angry, and just didn’t have time to talk and was just a mean nasty person. I really had to learn how to deal with those two conflicting situations because no two people are the same, and people are very funny creatures. Understanding how to read people, how to analyze a situation, how to learn when I was in a dangerous situation or a dangerous position, or a position where something could have gone wrong, and understanding how the mechanics of how all that works is something that I’ve taken on and still use at some point to this day. I sort of translate that into making further career moves and career steps, and people you align yourselves with, and having a bit of a strategy as to how the rest of you know my career is going to pan out. It’s sort of indirect, but there are a lot of things that I draw on from back in the day of being a tattooist that have somewhat followed me through. It’s a really difficult question.

Joseph: You mentioned strategy there, Brad. Now, if you had to give advice to your younger self, as it relates to navigating these career changes, what might that be?

Brad: [37:38] I think there’s two things that I would tell my younger self. The first thing is to be careful who you’ll listen to. Always seek feedback and advice but be careful what you take on board and who you take that on board from. We need to remember that people’s feedback and people’s advice and people’s opinions are always based on their own experiences. It includes their insecurities and their own biases. Sometimes, feedback can be really, really useful, and really, really helpful, and really insightful. Sometimes, feedback can say more about the person giving it than it can about you, the person receiving it. There’s a lot of frenemies in the corporate world I’ve come to learn. It’s understanding who’s on your side, who’s on your team. And, just being careful around that.

The second thing that I would tell myself would be make sure every move you make is very deliberate and very purposeful. Not getting distracted with flashy lights and things that shine all the time. Making sure that everything you do aligns to why you’re doing what you’re doing. Every career move you make aligns to your long-term goal. And block out the distractions, and don’t be too easily influenced.

Joseph: That is some great advice there, Brad. I think that there’s so many people who whether you solicit the opinions or not of those people, they want to weigh in on your career decisions and your moves. You’re absolutely right. It’s completely biased by their own experiences and their own insecurities sometimes. It’s hard to find somebody who’s truly objective with this.

Brad: [39:33] If I listen to everybody for every interview I went into as a real estate agent, if I listen to all of them, I wouldn’t be here today. I’ll probably still be sitting in a tattoo shop somewhere because to them, they had a bias that tattoo people weren’t going to amount to anything or wouldn’t fit in the industry. I chose not to take that on board when I very easily could have taken that on board. If I had, I wouldn’t be here. It’s just being very mindful about who you listen to.

Joseph: Last question here for you, Brad. You mentioned earlier that you learned a lot about yourself as a person through some of these moves. Clearly, you’ve faced a lot of naysayers along the way. Yet, you persisted through it all. When you think about your career change journey, going from tattoo artists to working in real estate to financial services, is there one thing in particular that you have learned about yourself that stands out to you?

Brad: [40:28] What I’ve learned is I’m actually able to do anything I want to do. Going through life, there’s always doubt. You always question whether what you’ve done is the right decision, and you’re always thinking, “Should I have done something different? Am I on the right path?” What I’ve learned about myself is I have the guts to change. I’m pragmatic enough to be able to do that. I’ve learned that I can shape my own future however I want to, and it’s up to me to do that. I’ve got the ability to do it. It’s that whole part of believing in myself. Even though there’s been times where I’ve felt like I’m in that position or in a role where I haven’t belonged, I do belong right where I am right now. I can do anything I put my mind to.

Joseph: Thank you so much Brad for telling me more about your former life as a tattoo artist and how you made some of these radical career pivots in the face of a lot of challenge. As you just mentioned, the importance of being selective about whose opinions you take on and the power of belief. Best of luck to you with your current role. I hope it all continues to go well for you.

Brad: [41:48] Thank you very much, Joseph. It was great to have a chat with you. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to come on your show.

Joseph: I hope you heard some useful insights from Brad about overcoming the judgments of others, managing imposter syndrome, and entering a new industry when you haven’t followed a traditional career path to get there.

[42:07]

If you’re not happy with your current job, but you don’t know exactly what you would prefer to do instead, what should do do? Bommy Lee, a journalist turned communications head of life sciences venture capital firm Sofinnova, shares her career insights on the power of professional relationships when relaunching your career, the importance of reconsidering your earlier career choices, and why being content with where you are doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll happy with where you’re headed.

Originally from Canada, Bommy is now based in Paris, France. I first crossed paths with Bommy when she spoke on an alumni career panel after a career change workshop I hosted for Executive MBAs at HEC Business School in Paris. I decided to invite her to share her story on the show because I felt like she provided some especially thoughtful perspectives on navigating career changes, and thought you might also enjoy hearing her thoughts and advice on topics related to networking, mindset, and career decisions.

During the Mental Fuel® segment, I’ll also address a listener’s question about how to figure out your next career move when no particular direction jumps out to you.

Bommy referred to this quote during our conversation that you may find relevant to your own career situation if you’ve been unhappy with your work for a while now:

If you know you’re not happy with your current role, but you’re not sure what to do instead, during this episode’s Mental Fuel® segment, my challenge to you, is to force yourself to take some proactive action, which I believe is what leads to opportunity and further illumination.

So whether it’s doing something more reflective like reconnecting with your values or childhood or something more active like doing some information interviews with people in industries you’re considering, I hope you can eventually then take your best guess and what could make you happier.

Bommy Lee is the Head of Communications at Sofinnova Partners, where she heads up the global communications strategy for a leading European venture capital firm in life sciences that invests into healthcare and sustainability. Previously, Bommy worked in startups building international brands and communications strategies in the medtech sector. But she started her career 20 years ago as a journalist for the International Herald Tribune. She’s originally from Canada and now based in Paris, France. Follow her on LinkedIn.

If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

I wanted to mention another podcast to check out. Have you ever wondered how to manage imposter syndrome? Or how to confront a bad manager? If so, be sure to check out the How To! podcast with Amanda Ripley who’s a best-selling author and investigative reporter on the hunt for answers to life’s toughest questions. Each week, listeners reach out with their problems, and Amanda connects them with the perfect experts who offer advice that can be life-changing.

You can even hear my OWN chat with Amanda about how to advance your career by quitting your job in the Nov 16, 2021 episode. Look for How To! from Slate wherever you listen to podcasts.

Music provided by Podington Bear

Birds – Corbyn Kites

Teaser (first ~15s): Someone close to me died suddenly and it really affected me. I started thinking about my own existence, and whether I was truly living a life that had meaning. A lot of the time, the answer was no…

Joseph: Good morning, Bommy. Welcome to the Career Relaunch podcast. It is great to have you on the show.

Bommy: [02:16] Thank you for having me, Joseph.

Joseph: What are you focused on right now in your career and your life, amid everything going on?

Bommy: [02:23] Well, I started my current job just over a year ago. At the time, I had just finished my Executive MBA Program and was looking for a change. I had a couple of offers on the table, and one of them, on paper at least, would have been a much bigger leap for me. But, in the end, I decided to go at this one. I have to say it was the best decision of my life.

Joseph: Can you give us a glimpse into your role at Sofinnova Partners, which is a VC firm in life sciences? What are you focused on there?

Bommy: [02:26] It’s a really exciting time in communications for this sector because finance, in particular, private equity, is not what you would call at the cutting edge of communications. If you can think about one finance company that is doing some groundbreaking things in comms, there aren’t a whole lot that would come to mind. And so, there’s a lot we can do to shift that. I’m heading up the communications team in Sofinnova, and that’s very exciting because I feel like it’s a little bit of a start-up initiative within a larger organization. There’s a lot of possibility and the start-up world is one that I love.

Joseph: It seems like a really exciting space to be in right now, especially when healthcare is so forefront in the news and in our lives at this particular moment. I want to go back in time and talk about your time before you worked in communications out of VC firm in the life sciences there in Paris but before that, can you just also tell me a little bit about where you’re from originally, where your family’s from, your personal background?

Bommy: [03:58] I was born in Canada. My family is Korean Canadian. They immigrated to Canada after the war. We ended up going back to Korea when I was in high school. I finished up my studies there. I went back to Canada to go to journalism school, and then, came to France about 20 years ago, to continue my studies in political science. My parents are in Korea. My brother is in Malaysia, and I have another brother in Canada. It’s a challenge to see each other but we’re very close. That’s been one of the hardest parts about the pandemic is not being able to just get on a plane and see the people you love which, as an expat, you really count on that facility and the possibility of being able to do that at any time.

Joseph: Yeah, that is really tough. I was just talking to my wife this morning about just not knowing exactly when I can go back to the United States, which is where I’m from because I’ve been there over a year and a half now, and there’s a lot of uncertainty around that. Speaking of mobility, you mentioned journalism and how you studied journalism. Can we go back in time a little bit and talk about your time in the world of journalism? And then, we can move forward from there and maybe we could start with your time at the International Herald Tribune.

Bommy: [05:18] At the time, it was called the “International Herald Tribune.” And then, it was rebranded “The International New York Times.” I was there when a lot of those changes were happening. As part of a great team that were spearheading the digital side of journalism. At the time, we were taking the print version of the paper and uploading it onto the website. We were calling it the “website,” the exact copy of the print version that day was our website.

Joseph: Like PDFs or something?

Bommy: [05:50] Almost. Practically, a PDF. Very cut-and-paste kind of job, and very manual. This is early 2000s, Twitter happened. We started seeing the potential of the web. We started seeing that sending reporters and photographers out to these sometimes war zones, very dangerous areas, they were coming back with amazing reporting, photography, and the print format is limited. Whereas, digital, you could make a slideshow with 12 of the best photos. You could have an interview with a reporter about what it was like to be on the scene, and not be limited in space or by deadlines. There was a shift in the industry, and it was very exciting because there was a lot of change going on. In that sense, I was very lucky to be there when that was happening and meeting people who were willing to take that risk and try something new. That was my time with the IHT. Very, very fond memories.

Joseph: I know you said you’re from Canada, and then you moved. It sounds like your first professional experience was in Paris. What was that like for you to make that sort of geographical, and also cultural, change that early on in your career?

Bommy: [07:09] The IHT was my first real professional experience in Paris. It was based in Noisiel Siene, which is just outside of Paris. That was a very expat, American, Anglophone experience. There was a multicultural group, but it was still very North American in its culture. The way we work, we ate at our desks. We learned a lot from our truly French colleagues, who had a different way of working. I didn’t get to experience that fully until I left journalism and joined the start-up world in a French med-tech start-up, specializing in [unintelligible] microscopy. That was really my first French experience in the workplace. That also was quite international, but it’s the first time I was exposed to a lot of different ways of working. It’s a big learning experience for me.

Joseph: How did you end up making that shift from journalism into the world of medical technology? Was that just an interest of yours? Did it sort of opportunistically happen?

Bommy: [08:15] It was very serendipitous in a way. I had been at the Herald Tribune for I think it was 5, 6 years. The digital operations started doing well and they wanted to bring it back to the mothership in New York. I wasn’t ready to leave Paris at the time, so I left. In the meantime, I had my first two daughters. I wasn’t in a hurry to go back into the working world. I wanted to spend some quality time with our new family. I’ve had a couple shifts in my career and in each time, it’s been closely tied to people. People who were willing to take a chance on me, even if I didn’t come from their world and have the usual credentials and people who were leading a vision or mission I believed in and I wanted to be part of. So, when I was on the unemployment list in France, you’re obligated to send out a few CVs a month to show that you’re actively searching to get your benefits. I ended up, not very actively, but I ended up speaking to someone who was looking for an addition to the marketing communications team to help on the digital side. Since I’ve been working on the digital side at the Trib, that’s what got me my foot in. But, it’s a whole new world. I didn’t know start-ups. I’d never worked in a French company before. I didn’t know anything about medicine. I’m not a scientist, so there was a lot of unknowns. But, what motivated me was the person that was hiring me. Their vision, the vision of the company. All of that felt exciting, and we had the potential of helping people to detect cancer more easily, and be alleviated of the anxiety around that, and get a diagnosis much faster, more accurately. That part of it spoke to me. So, I jumped in.

Joseph: You mentioned something there, Bommy, that I think comes up a lot with people when they’re thinking about making a change, which is to pursue roles that, at least on paper, may not seem like they are directly aligned with your background or your skill set. You mentioned that people were willing to give you an opportunity even though you didn’t necessarily come from that specific sector. What was it about your approach or how you went about this, that you felt opened the doors to you with these opportunities that didn’t initially seem like they would be possible or viable?

Bommy: [10:48] I think opportunities are linked to people. If you are able to demonstrate to someone, even though they don’t know whether you’re able to deliver on a certain type of job description, you’re able to demonstrate that you’re able and willing. That you have a background or a track record, not necessarily in the same domain, but transferable skills, that could be valuable to a job. Even though it’s completely a new sector or a new type of role. I think that’s where the key is. That’s also what has given me subsequent opportunities in areas. After that particular role in that start-up, I went on to another start-up that was less in the B2B space, more in the B2C or B2C2B space in diabetes, in novel technology for insulin delivery for type 1 diabetes. That is much more speaking directly to the consumer, to the end-user. I had no experience in retail before. But, the person who gave me that opportunity was also someone I had crossed paths with in the past, and she believed that I could come and do the job. A lot of it has to do with making those connections with people who will open those doors for you. I’m very grateful to them for having given me that chance.

Joseph: Can you just share a glimpse into your approach to networking? It sounds like these people you’ve come across have been quite useful, helpful people in your life. At the same time, I know that some people who are networking or building professional relationships sometimes will tell me, “Well, they’re not really fruitful, or they’re not materializing into anything.” What’s your mindset when you go about connecting with people professionally or just building out your professional network?

Bommy: [12:39] Networking for me is building a safety net for the future. The approach that is very important to take in networking is not that you’re trying to sell yourself or trying to find opportunities for yourself, but that you are trying to be useful to someone and make a meaningful connection. When or if the time comes, because sometimes it never does, it’s an investment. You never know what it’s going to end up being like. If you go into a networking opportunity with the mindset that, “I’m going to try to find a way to be completely authentic, to find people that I connect with naturally and find ways to be useful to that person,” even if it’s a really small thing. Like, “Oh, are you in Paris for the first time? Do you know a good restaurant? Can I make a recommendation?” Just finding connections or common threads that you can connect on. I think it’s all about the human relationship. I’m sure you’ve heard of Adam Grant’s theory on givers and takers. If you go into a simple conversation, you can tell when someone is there because they want something from you. Or, you can tell when they’re just there to have a nice exchange, and that comes across. The best kind of networking is really when you can go into a conversation with a serving mindset, a helpful mindset, a giving mindset, rather than taking.

Joseph: It’s really helpful advice. A good reminder that it’s definitely about relationship building, and it can be better to think about it more long term. You mentioned the experience you had in diabetes management. That was at the Cellnovo Group in Paris. Is that correct?

Bommy: [14:26] Exactly.

Joseph: What was that like for you to work in the space of diabetes management? How did you think your career was going to evolve there and then how did it ultimately evolve?

Bommy: [14:35] It was a very exciting opportunity because I was able to see much more clearly the impact our work was having on people’s lives, on the quality of their life. I was able to meet directly with patients who were using our technology. That’s very motivating. That’s sort of the red thread between what I did in journalism. What I’ve found in healthcare is there’s a public service that you’re contributing to the world. In journalism, that was information so that people could make decisions and run democracies. In healthcare, we’re working on innovative technologies that can help save lives and help people to be happier. I need that kind of deeper purpose, I suppose. That’s what gets me up in the morning, knowing that I am contributing to something that is helping others.

Joseph: The other topic I would like to talk with you about is during your time at Cellnovo, you decided to pursue an executive MBA. Can you just explain to me what was your thinking behind that? How did you come to the decision that you wanted to go back to school? What prompted you to pursue an executive MBA?

Bommy: [15:55] I would have to take you a few years back to when I decided to embark on a career change. I think the first factor was that my youngest daughter finally started sleeping through the night. Until that point, my husband and I have been on survival mode trying to remain relatively functional and coherent. Our lives revolved around the daily routines and needs of our three daughters. It’s completely normal but it’s exhausting. Suddenly, when they were out of diapers, going to school, sleeping regularly, I was able to lift my head and see beyond the fogginess of sleep deprivation. That’s when things started becoming more clear. It’s also when things started hitting me and I realized, “Hmm, not sure I like what I see ahead.” At the same time, there was a second trigger. Someone close to me died suddenly. It was the first time I experienced such a loss, and it affected me. I started thinking about my own existence, and whether I was truly living a life that had meaning. A lot of the time, the answer was no. So, I decided, “I’m going to have to do something about this.” I don’t know what. Looking back at that time, I gravitated towards books about death because it helped me to clarify life, its purpose, my purpose, and how I wanted to write the rest of my story.

That brings me to your question about the MBA. The third thing that happened in this big shift was I enrolled in a part-time executive MBA. I didn’t know at the time exactly what I wanted but my goal was to come out on the other end with more knowledge, more options, and more confidence to be able to change the direction of my career and my life.

Joseph: I had a client of mine just asked me about this topic of going back to school. He’s been working for a while in the corporate world. One of the questions that he has, and one of the hesitations that I often hear come up when people talk about returning to school are things like the opportunity cost of stepping away from work. I know that’s not directly relevant in your case because you’re still working full time when you’re doing an executive MBA. But, how did you think about the trade-offs between just putting your head down, continuing to focus on work, versus adding yet another task on top of your already busy life and pursuing an executive MBA?

Bommy: [18:34] I think it was the realization that I was very unhappy, and that the road ahead was not one that was going to be enough for me. It really was this realization that I was unhappy, that I had done everything I thought I should do to fulfill all the criteria that should lead to a good life. Going to good schools, getting a job, finding a life partner, having kids, giving back to the community, all those things that I thought should make me happy and fulfilled, and then coming to realization that I actually know this was not going to cut it for me. It was really hard when I realized one day that I had no idea how I got here. Everything I had worked towards so diligently might have been for all the wrong reasons. It made me dig very deep into the past, childhood experiences, painful moments that I may have buried or brushed over. I found myself revisiting everything, questioning everything.

Joseph: Was there something in particular that you felt was missing from your career or your life at the time?

Bommy: [19:53] I think, at the time, it wasn’t that anything was missing. But, when I looked ahead at the trajectory of my life, I didn’t like where it was leading.

One of my favorite quotes from Maya Angelou is when she said, “If the world puts you on a road you do not like, if you look ahead and you don’t like what you see, you don’t like the destination you’re being led to, then you need to step off that road and build a new path.” You might not know where that path is going, but the first step really is to take that leap and say, “Okay. I’m going into the unknown.” If I weigh all of those risks and uncertainties, it’s still worth it. It may not work out. But, in the end, it’s worth doing something that’s very scary and uncertain than to know that I will be stuck on a path that seems pretty clear in terms of what those limitations will be.

Joseph: What was it about where that road was leading you that made you feel like you were traveling in the wrong direction?

Bommy: [21:04] In France, especially in the working world, there is still an expectation that you are able to do a certain job because you went to the right schools, and you had the right credentials to be able to do it. My role at Cellnovo was taking me more into an area that I felt I didn’t have that knowledge or the credentials for into the business side, rather than the communications and the digital side. It was a public company, we were dealing with investors, we were having to put out quarterly reports. I wasn’t feeling like I had enough knowledge to be able to translate the meaning of our quarterly reports to the investors, if I were to get a question, for example. There were areas like that where I felt that, “Okay. I’ve done everything I can to learn on the job from the people who are very happy to help me.” But, I’ve come to a point where I need to accelerate. If I continue trying to learn on my own, I’m only going to get so far, and I want to be farther. I don’t want to be limited because of this. That was one of the main driving factors for going back to business school. To a school that is recognized in France, one that has a very good network. To be able to get not only the benefits of everything that comes with going to a recognized reputed school, but also to have a more formal understanding, the structures and the theory behind everything that I was trying to apply my day-to-day job.

Joseph: You go to HEC Paris Business School. What then happens as a result of that, or in parallel, to doing your executive MBA as you thought about your next move in your career?

Bommy: [23:02] I went into the MBA thinking, “Okay. I’m going to get a degree, get the knowledge I need, and come out on the other end with more career options.” What ended up happening was that, when you’re not happy with one aspect of your life, then often it’s linked to a lot of other things. I didn’t realize how deeply that impacted all of my other life decisions. I suppose a job really can define an identity and once you start digging into the whys and hows of that identity, you realize that it’s closely linked to other life decisions.

Professional questioning, that was one part of it. But, I met a lot of people who were going through similar challenges, and we really connected because you end up questioning a lot of different parts of your life and feeling very alone at times. There were some solitary moments for me where I felt that I didn’t know if I could talk to anybody. I didn’t know who might understand around me. Being able to connect with others in that MBA program, my peers, my colleagues, who were in a similar stage of their professional lives, and we’re also going through the emotions of that change. It was very comforting to know that I wasn’t alone.

Joseph: It can be a very lonely, solitary journey when you are revisiting your past, and your history, and a lot of stuff. I’ve been there myself. A lot of stuff comes up, and you kind of realize these things you’ve been carrying around for quite a long time, and that can be a lot to handle.

Before we talk about some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way in your transitions, how did you then discover the opportunity at Sofinnova, and what prompted you to move there?

Bommy: [25:12] It was a result of a connection that I had made through HEC. My advisor for my Capstone project, which is the end of the year business thesis. He was someone who helped me a lot along the way. When I was finishing up my degree, the company, Cellnovo, we weren’t able to raise enough capital to continue operations, and we started shutting things down. It’s a very difficult time. What ended up happening was I graduated, June 13th, a few days before we officially closed the company. I felt a huge emptiness and I didn’t know what to do.

My advisor helped in a lot of ways. He helped me to get through that. He was someone who helped me on the content of that paper but also tried to help me find that next step. He introduced me to the former chairman of Sofinnova Partners, and said, “Look. You never know. He’s part of the network. He knows a lot of people.” One of my ex-colleagues found out I had met with him, and later told me, “You know you’ve just met the godfather of biotech investing in France.” He’s a really big guy! And, I thought, “Wow! Really? He didn’t come off as he was.” I just had such a good connection with Henri. We sat down for coffee. That’s all we did, and we just talked. It was such a good conversation. I think this is where you know going back to networking. If you go in just with no expectations, just with the right mindset, then magic can happen. And, that’s exactly what happened. He ended up introducing me to the current chairman. We had a few conversations there. At the beginning, it was just talk of a few consulting gigs and seemed exciting. One thing led to the next. All of a sudden, they were saying, “Well, we might have enough here for a full-time job. What do you think?” That’s how it happened.

Joseph: The last thing I want to talk with you about, Bommy, is just some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way of your very interesting career change journey that has been filled with some pretty major transitions. You and I first crossed paths when you served on an alumni panel at HEC Paris Business School. After a talk I gave there about career change a couple of weeks ago, one of the things that you said that stuck out to me, and kind of prompted me to want to get you on the show was, when you were discussing transitions and when you mentioned you’re motivated because you’re willing to leave something behind to pursue something greater. What did you mean by that?

Bommy: [28:10] This is definitely one of the big lessons that I took away from this experience. You just need to embrace the pain. This is the quote that we talked about from the Japanese American writer, Haruki Murakami, who says, “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice,” and it’s true. When you decide to make that leap into the unknown, it’s an opportunity for growth. That growth comes with pain, and the struggle is all part of it. Keeping that in mind, and the fact that it’s not necessarily about the finish line but the journey, puts things into a completely different perspective. That, for me, was one of the things that was the key takeaways.

The other thing is that there’s a point where you’re willing to leave everything behind because the opportunity to pursue something bigger is that much more important. Career change is a team sport. Yes, the decision and the courage need to start with you. Yes, you do have to do the hard work. But, there are so many people who help me along the way and in a million ways, whether they know it or not. There was a turning point for me when I realized that if I was going to continue along this path, I would be unhappy. If I was unhappy it would impact the people that I loved the most. So, I had to make the leap because it was the chance to become a person that I want to be for my daughters, for my husband, for my parents, for my brothers, my friends. That risk was worth it because the potential endpoint was that much greater.

Joseph: You mentioned there “embrace the pain.” What was most painful for you about making your career moves?

Bommy: [30:1] Again, back to the idea that “career change is a team sport.” Maybe “sport” is too light a word because there are a lot of dark moments: doubt, frustration, and confusion, and anger. The point is that the hardest thing is taking that leap. It’s very scary. It’s something that took me a lot of time to decide to actually do. When I did it, I was very glad. The other big lesson for me in this was that it’s only when I recognized that my limitations were self-imposed, that I was able to go beyond them. That change of perspective was key to opening so many more doors to new possibilities.

Joseph: The final question for you here is around that idea of introspection. Having pulled off multiple transitions that seem, to me at least, to be pretty difficult to pull off. What have you learned about yourself along the way?

Bommy: [31:18] I can’t do everything on my own. I need to ask for help. What is difficult for me is I’m very independent, very self-reliance. Having to ask for help has always felt like a weakness but the incredible thing that happened was when I realized that I couldn’t get through this on my own. When I started reaching out to people, it just started coming from everywhere. My mentors, my coaches, my HEC colleagues, my husband, my family, everyone was there to help me get through this. It was great to see that I had all these people to help me along.

Joseph: Can you tell me a little bit more about what’s next for you? What are your hopes as you look ahead in your career, Bommy?

Bommy: [32:10] The way I’ve been thinking about my next steps are in the context of how I would like my life to fall from this point. I’ve been thinking a lot about the past. In the first part of our lives, we receive and take from our parents, our teachers, our communities. We choose a lifestyle and career. We feed ourselves of knowledge and experience. What I’d like to do now is to shift into what I think should be the logical next step, which when we have received so much in life, then we should give using the knowledge and experience that we’ve gained to empower and help others, which you are an expert at, in helping people to do this transition. I would love to go more in that direction. I’m really grateful for this opportunity to share my experience with you. I hope it will help others who might be going through similar struggles.

Joseph: Thank you so much, Bommy, for telling me more about your shift from journalism to the world of communications, and then also spending your time in the healthcare sector. How you manage to connect with people during those important transitions in your career, and also the importance of ensuring that your career aligns with the kind of life you want, not only for yourself but also for the people around you. So, best of luck with your current role and all your future endeavors.

Bommy: [33:38] Thank you, Joseph. It’s been a pleasure.

Joseph: I hope you heard some useful insights from Bommy about re-evaluating your career direction, the trade-offs of staying put versus trying something new and why your professional network can play a key role in your career pivot.

[33:51]

Teacher turned marketer Alex Spencer of Prezzybox shares her perspectives on the importance of climbing the right career ladder in episode 78 of the Career Relaunch® podcast. She explains how taking a temporary hit to her salary was worth it to her in the long run because it ultimately gave her the chance to do work she found more meaningful. We also discuss the true measures of your professional success and satisfaction (hint–it’s not just salary!) and the importance of being selective and specific about your next target role.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I talked about how money can understandably stop people from making the changes they want in their careers. If you’re thinking about making a career change, but a potential salary drop is standing in your way, try to get crystal clear on what exact, temporary salary decrease you could stomach, both practically and psychologically.

What salary decrease wouldn’t have a significant impact on your ability to do the important things you want to do in your life and career? What is that exact figure? Do the math, and write it down. Maybe seeing that number can help you clarify exactly what is and is not possible when considering your next move.

Alex Spencer started her career as an English lecturer teaching 16-18 year olds at a further education college in England, but eventually changed career paths to become a PR and Marketing Executive at the online gift retailer Prezzybox. On the side, she also freelances as a content writer and volunteers for NOW-U, a non-profit organization helping to tackle some of the world’s most pressing environmental and social problems. And she’s also the mum to one.

Follow Alex on LinkedIn and Twitter.

If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

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Teaser (first ~15s): A nice job title and a high salary isn’t all that you need to make you happy. You need to do something that gives you energy and gives you joy and brings you happiness. You’re not going to get that no matter how high your salary is if you’re not happy in what you’re doing.

Joseph: Okay. Good morning, Alex, and welcome to Career Relaunch. It is great to have you on the show.

Alex: [02:35] Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Joseph: We got a lot to cover today. I want to talk about your time as a teacher and how you made the shift into marketing. But, I would love to start by getting a glimpse into what is keeping you busy right now in your career and your life.

Alex: [02:53] At home, I have a husband and daughter who is only 16 months. She’s just started walking, so she takes up an awful lot of time and energy. She is the most wonderful thing but she is always on the go. I’m surprised that I do have the energy to work alongside it. Somehow, I managed to go to work for Prezzybox. We’re one of the leading online gift retailers in the UK. I work as a marketing and PR executive at Prezzybox. They are just a wonderful company to work for. I can’t praise them highly enough. I’m, at the moment, trying to focus on learning as much as I can about marketing, the broad sort of spectrum really of SEO, PR, social content marketing. That’s what I’m focused on at the moment, learning as much as I can.

Joseph: For those people who are not super familiar with the geography of the UK, can you give a glimpse into where you’re based and what you’re setup is there?

Alex: [03:50] I live in the Midlands. I can’t say where it is but nobody would ever heard of where I live because it’s a very small town in the Midlands. Essentially, I live near to Derby, quite near to Birmingham, and about two hours from London, just to give it some context. It’s quite nice and quiet where we live in the Midlands. And then, I work in Warwickshire, again in the Midlands, in a converted farmhouse. We have office dogs and goats, which is interesting, to say the least.

Joseph: Oh, wow! You’ve got quite the scenic setup over there then?

Alex: [04:20] It’s certainly nowhere near a city. Not the sort of typical office block that you would imagine. It’s basically a farmhouse, sort of down a country lane. We have a big field outside, and that’s where the office goats and dogs currently reside. Although, we’re not in the office at the moment. We’re going in a little bit. Obviously, with the pandemic, we were remote working. We started to go back in a little bit, but not fully so we are all missing the animals quite a lot. Although, they are being taken care of, just in case anyone was panicking about that.

Joseph: I’ve heard of office dogs. I have to say, Alex, this is the first time I’ve ever heard of an office goat.

Alex: [05:00] Yeah.

Joseph: Check that out, at some point.

Alex: [05:04] We like to do things differently.

Joseph: You mentioned you’re working in marketing and PR right now. I know you haven’t always worked in that sector. Can we go back in time a little bit and start from the beginning? Can you tell us about your time as a teacher and what you were focused on? The types of students you were teaching at the time, and then we’ll kind of go forward from there.

Alex: [05:22] I suppose my first, sort of what people might say, real job after university was a teacher. I was teaching in a further education college in the UK. Sixteen to 18-year-olds who’d just left compulsory education and are going on to study whatever they would like to study: engineering, travel and tourism, more vocational subjects. It was my job to teach them English. It’s a strange one. I wasn’t a teacher in the conventional sense. The students hadn’t quite managed to get the grades that the government likes them to get. The equivalent of a C grade. It was my job to teach them their English again. It was very interesting, because understandably, as a 16-year-old going into education, finally being able to choose what you want to do, and then to be told, “Oh, hang on a second. You’ve got to do your English again.” To many of those 16-year-olds, that’s quite frustrating understandably.

Joseph: Had you always wanted to become a teacher? How did you get into the field of teaching?

Alex: [06:35] No. My life is just a series of falling into things. Thankfully, now that I’ve fallen into marketing, I’ve kind of realized that this is what I want to do forever, and it’s the best thing that ever happened. But, in terms of teaching, in my interview — I was being interviewed for another position in the college, I mentioned that I might like to look into English teaching in the future. Fast forward, not even 24 hours, I’ve been offered a position as an English teacher. It was something that was on my mind, but not something that I just thought it’s my life ambition.

Joseph: You mentioned this is a further education college, and that these are 16- to 18-year-olds who were there learning English but didn’t necessarily want to be there learning English. Can you describe the student profile and the learning environment there?

Alex: [07:22] They were absolutely amazing young people. I learned so much from them. Their resilience, their thirst for learning was amazing. It’s just that, again, understandably, they wanted to be there to learn their chosen vocation. They wanted to be there to learn engineering or their desired electrical apprenticeships, employment apprenticeships, and all sorts of different vocational subjects that they were super interested in and they loved their subjects. But again, a requirement of doing those subjects was that they had to also, if they hadn’t got their C grade in English or Maths actually, they had to do English and Maths again. They would go to their classes, as usual, as normal. Go to their engineering classes, or travel and tourism classes, and then they would have a couple of hours with me per week. I don’t think it’s a couple of hours that they necessarily look forward to, but I did try my best to sort of make it as engaging as possible or as much as you possibly can do. Obviously, you have to follow the curriculum and you have to teach them to pass the exam, ultimately.

There’s only so much you can do and so much flexibility there. I did try as much as I can because I feel like with my personality, I tried to sort of form a bond with them as much as I possibly could. I did sort of completely sympathize with that position. I explain to them that I understand how frustrating that it must be to be told, “Okay. Go in that room now after two hours and do something you don’t want to do.” Especially, at that age, when you’re a teenager and you’re going into adulthood, it’s like you want that freedom and that autonomy. It felt like I was kind of taking that away from them, so I almost felt guilty about doing it. But, I was trying to help them in their future careers at the same time.

Joseph: At what point did it occur to you that teaching may not be what you wanted to do the rest of your life?

Alex: [09:11] To be honest, it was quite soon into me working as a teacher, which sounds crazy. Because many people say, “Well, why didn’t you just leave?” And, I understand that. But, I think the idea of being labeled as what is often seen as a negative thing, a job hopper or career hopper, I think that was what I was afraid of because I only just started it and thought, “Well actually, I’m quite good at it.” I’ve got loads of support from my colleagues. I thought, “I’ve got to make this work.” It’s a respected profession. I know I’d have job security. It was really difficult to know when the right time was. I think, in hindsight, probably should have done it, left sooner rather than later. I was so obsessed with not being labeled a “career hopper,” which I now realize is silly because you spend more time at work than you do with your family in your life, and you have to be happy with your job. Quite soon but it did take me a couple of years to make the leap.

Joseph: What was it like for you during those couple of years when you knew you weren’t in the right location but you couldn’t quite bring yourself to move on to something else?

Alex: [10:20] It’s really hard. Anyone who’s in the same position will know how hard it is because it’s a constant battle of wills of what is the right thing to do. Do you stay? Especially, if you’ve got what is seen by society as a respected career, and a safe career, and a secure career. Do you stay? Again, with the salary, decent salary. It wasn’t just the job title that I would be giving up, it was the salary as well. It was just a constant battle of, “What do I do? Do I try and stick it out? Is it going to get easier for me?”

I knew it wasn’t right. It didn’t feel right. Even though I feel I worked so hard to be a good teacher. It just never felt right. I knew pretty much, straight away, that it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Other sort of factors, I guess pressure. The pressure that I thought I might face from other people sort of stopped me from doing that, until I started to do freelance copywriting work on the side, and that’s when everything changed.

Joseph: Yeah, let’s shift gears. Let’s talk a little bit about that. You started doing copywriting on the side. How did you get into that and how did you find your clients?

Alex: [11:32] The link between English teaching and marketing is quite strong because what you’re doing is creating content all the time for your students. You have to show them not only how to write fiction, but how to write nonfiction. We did a lot of creative marketing. Sort of leaflets and bits and bobs like that, and adverts. I loved that! I thought, “Hang on a second, I love doing this!” As much as I love the students as well, I thought, “This creating content and writing, surely, there’s got to be something in this. Maybe this is something that I need to focus on.” So, I started to freelance as a copywriter thinking, “Well, if nobody hires me, that’s fine. It’s not a full-time job.” I went on Upwork and started speaking to a lovely lady who I thought, “Oh, my gosh! She’s willing to pay me to write. This is crazy!” I did some content for her blog. That’s how it started.

I got a couple more clients and thought people are paying me to do this. Maybe it’s something that I can do full-time because that was the job that was giving me energy rather than taking it from me. I think if you’re coming home from work every day, feeling burnt out and feeling lethargic, and so tired, it’s a sign that things are not quite right.

Joseph: You mentioned Upwork. I’d like to talk about that for just a second for people who are not familiar with Upwork. Upwork is one of the many online freelancer marketplace platforms out there. There are, I guess, wow, tens of thousands of freelancers on these sites. How did you get started on Upwork? How did you build up your profile? Did you just literally put up a headshot, and then put up a quick description of yourself? Could you just give a glimpse into how you got started on that sort of a platform?

Alex: [13:15] It is daunting. Certainly because when you go on it, you realize how many thousands of freelancers you’re kind of competing with. I’d never been paid to write before. What I did was, I built up quite a sort of portfolio by creating content for my students. I kind of used that basically as a portfolio and put some work up. I think finding your niche is a really good way of going about it. I was interested in healthy eating and healthy living, and so that’s the angle that I went down. I searched for jobs that would involve creating content around that topic because it was something that I was genuinely interested in. That’s how I found my first client.

I think the fact that in my proposal to her I explained that enthusiasm. She said that that’s why I stood out because I didn’t just say, “Oh, well. I really like writing. Can I write for you?” I said, “I really like writing. Can I write for you? I really like the subject that your blog is about, and I think I can add a lot of value to it.”

Joseph: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I guess the temptation when you’re just getting started on these platforms, Alex, is to try to be everything to everyone. But, actually, by being more specific, it’s easier for people to understand what to do with you, and it’s easier to stand out. I guess as somebody myself who’s hired people on Upwork, I’m definitely looking for specialists who focus on a particular area. That’s a good point about that.

I also want to talk a little bit about how you went from this freelance work into the work you’re doing right now. I know you kind of walked me through this process but can you just tell me how you uncovered this opportunity to work more full-time in marketing?

Alex: [14:55] After a sort of maybe a couple of months of freelancing, it wasn’t very long at all. I started to look into full-time jobs, thinking “Okay. Well, I might have to take a pay cut, but I love doing it.” Like I said before, it’s something that gives me energy and makes me happy and makes me smile, rather than taking my energy from me. I thought there’s got to be something. Someone’s got to give me a shot, even though I’ve got no experience. Yes, I might be starting at the bottom of the ladder again. But, for me, it was completely worth it. So, I started to look into jobs, and I saw this position as a copywriter at Prezzybox.

Joseph: Where did you find the ad? Was it just on their website?

Alex: [15:33] It was on Indeed.

Joseph: So job recruitment platform.

Alex: [15:37] Yeah. I’ve not looked at many, but indeed was just one of the first ones that I looked at and looked for. A lot of copywriter positions were in London. And, because I live 2 1/2 hours away from London, that is just not something that I could do. There’s no way I could commute to London, even though that’s where all the jobs were and there was no way of me moving there. I was a bit hesitant about changing careers because I thought, “Well, there can’t be that many marketing positions in the Midlands.” But, little did I know, there’s plenty. I saw this copywriter position, and instead of just sending over a CV, which is what it asked for, I wrote. Prezzybox is an online gift retailer so we sell lots of awesome gifts. I went on the site and I did some product descriptions for some of the products that were on the site, sent them over to the managing director. He gave me an interview because I was the only one that had done that. I’ve gone above and beyond, and it’s not something that everyone has time for. But, if you can go above and beyond, obviously, of course, that’s going to make you stand out. That’s how I got the interview.

Joseph: That’s really interesting because I think it can be very daunting to try to approach a job application process as somebody who doesn’t necessarily come from that more traditional linear background. And then, you’re going into the interview itself, trying to sell yourself as somebody who can take on this role. Can you tell us a little bit about the interview and how that went for you?

Alex: [17:03] It’s very daunting, isn’t it? Very daunting, unless you’ve got lots of years of experience. Like you’re going into a room and saying, “Hi there. I haven’t done this before but I promise I could do it.” It’s a very bizarre situation. Especially for graduates, that’s just normal because I’d been out of uni for a few years. It was a difficult thing to do, to be honest, to start again. But, the interview was amazing, and Prezzybox is a very informal, sort of family-friendly environment. It wasn’t what I was expecting at all. I arrived dressed very formally with my portfolio in hand, my degree certificate, and all my qualifications. Thinking, “Okay. Well, I don’t know what this is going to be, but I’ll be prepared.” It was just more like a chat. The managing director was just amazing! He was so funny. He made me feel so at ease. It was the most fun I’ve ever had in an interview. I got my degree certificate and said, “Oh, you know, don’t you see it?” He just wasn’t interested, not in a negative way. It’s just that he valued enthusiasm more than pieces of paper. In fact, our Chief Operations Officer at the moment, he didn’t have any qualifications in marketing. He sort of started at the bottom at Prezzybox and worked his way right to the top. There, at Prezzybox, is more about you as a person and what you can bring to the company. They’re not so bothered about your qualifications.

Joseph: What happened after the interview?

Alex: [18:33] They were really interested in taking me on, but that was for a temporary position. I forgot to mention that. That would have been a temporary role for three months. I was having to make this really big decision. “Okay. Do I leave this secure permanent job that I’m quite good at?” And, I think I would have had job security there. Do I leave that and do I leave this respected profession to do something that my family didn’t even know? My family didn’t understand what copywriting was, which is fair. Because I don’t think I understood when I was at university or when I was younger what copyrighting in marketing was either. But, do I leave that secure job to do a temporary role and take a big pay cut as well? About £10,000 less at this job. It was a difficult one. Me and my husband had lots of long chats about it. Thinking, “Can we make this work? Is it the right decision? Is it sensible?” To be honest, it wasn’t sensible, but we made it work and I did it anyway. The rest is history. And now, I’m still there.

Joseph: I can see. You’re talking about some pretty major tradeoffs to consider there, which is permanent to temporary, you mentioned a major pay cut. What ultimately tipped the scales for you to decide that, “Yeah, I want to do this.”

Alex: [19:51] It’s a really tricky one because not everybody is in the position to take massive pay cut. It’s not something that everyone can do. But, if you are in a position to take a pay cut for something that you genuinely enjoy, it’s the best thing that I’ve ever done. Of course, you have to adapt in terms of your lifestyle if you’re taking a big pay cut. But, if you are happy when you get home from work and if you are doing a job that brings you joy, the two don’t compare. And also, you are going to progress, salary-wise, and in terms of your position much quicker in a career that you enjoy than a career that you’re just forcing to make work. That’s what I was doing with teaching. I was forcing it to work. Whereas, with this job, I just want to learn everything and I want to progress and I want to do this for the rest of my life. I’ve now worked my way up, back up to my previous salary. I think you could do that much easier if you are doing something that you really enjoy.

Joseph: I know that a lot of people, Alex, when they’re thinking about making a move a few years after already investing some time into one career, are very fearful of this idea. I think you prefer to of starting again or starting over. Can you just explain what that like was for you to start again in a career? Knowing that this is the career that you wanted to do but I’m just curious what that experience was like for you to “start over again.”

Alex: [21:15] It is very difficult because the question you asked about starting again, it was different for me because I haven’t been teaching for a couple of years. But, I imagine it’s even harder if you’ve got an established career and you’ve been there for however many years, it is never, ever too late to change. It is never too late to do something that you want to do. It’s never too late to try something new. I find it difficult because when this age of social media where everybody shares everything, it was quite tough sort of seeing my peers move up the ladder quicker than I was because, of course, I’d started again. That was quite tough. But, at the end of the day, it all comes back to I was going home happy. I was going home, not burnt out. I was going home thinking, “Okay. I didn’t have the Sunday night dread anymore,” which is what a lot of people experience. I enjoyed being at work. I enjoyed spending time with colleagues. It’s just a completely different experience. I’ve said this before, and I say it so much because it’s so true, you do spend more time at work than you do, in many instances, with your family and your friends. Life is way too short to be going to a job every day that you don’t enjoy, or that burns you out, or that makes you stressed. It’s just not worth it. This is a strange quote to pull out, but I was watching the UK version of “The Office” recently. Tim was speaking about his career change and he said, “It’s better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than halfway up one that you don’t.” And, I feel like that’s a perfect sort of analysis of what any career change, really. It’s better to be at the bottom of the ladder that you want to move up, of course, it is.

Joseph: That’s a good segue, Alex, into the last topic I was hoping to cover with you before we wrap up with what you’re focused on right now at Prezzybox. But, just some of the lessons that you’ve learned along the way and just your experience of relaunching your career. You had mentioned something about a topic that I think relates to what you just mentioned, which is that your job doesn’t feel like work anymore to you. What does it feel like to you?

Alex: [23:24] That’s an amazing question. It definitely doesn’t. I mean Prezzybox is wonderful. We have a fantastic work-life balance. We have very achievable targets. We’re all working as a team. If we have a struggle, we can just ask our manager and we’ll have that support straight away. I’m not just saying that, it is genuinely true. If I want to do a bit outside of work, then I will. I don’t have to, but if I want to, then I will because it does make me happy. Like this morning, I was writing a blog about our Prezzybox staff’s favorite, funny films, and it’s just things like that. It just doesn’t feel like work. It just feels like I’m back at teaching and creating content again but that was the bit of that job that I enjoyed. It has changed my life completely.

My husband was experiencing a similar thing in his job. And, because of my career change, he did something similar within his work. And so, his work-life balance is completely changed. It has a knock-on effect with your home life, definitely. We’re both just so much happier now. So much less stressed. I can’t stress enough how important it is to change. If you need to change, and if you’re in a position to change your career, whether that’s because you’re stressed or burnt out or whatever it is, it doesn’t matter the reason. But, if you’re in a position to do so, you have to do it. You just have to do it because it can change your life completely, and it can change your home life as well.

Joseph: What was something that you were stuck on when you were pondering the career change that you felt you ultimately had to overcome to move forward?

Alex: [25:03] One of the biggest things that was stopping me was because I am terrible at comparing myself with other people. Again, I think because social media bombards you with people — which is wonderful. People being so successful, and maybe up the ladder, and all this success which is fantastic. But, it can make you feel inferior and it can make you feel a bit vulnerable in terms of your position. I certainly had to ignore the fact that I would be behind if I compared myself to some of my peers of the same age.

And then, once I did that and I thought, “Well, you have 40 years or more of working. I’ve got plenty of time to move up because I am ambitious and I do want to progress.” But, what’s the point of doing that in something that you’re not happy with, and in a career that you’re not happy with? Once I’ve sort of silenced the little voices in my head that were saying, “Oh, you can’t do that because then you’ll be behind.” What does that mean? Everyone’s on a different journey, and everyone takes different paths. You should never compare yourself to other people because that, ultimately, will hold you back.

Joseph: I catch myself doing that and have done that throughout my career. Especially, during times when I’m thinking about changing careers is to just go on LinkedIn, and just scroll through, and you see who’s getting promoted, and which new job they’ve landed at, which amazing company. For those people out there, and I’m one of those people, who are stuck on this very common barrier of comparing yourself to others and wanting to keep up with their peers, any advice that you have for people on how to let that go and how to silence that comparison voice inside your head?

Alex: [26:50] From a practical perspective, I think taking a break from social media is the first thing to do if you’re considering a career change. Because if you’re on LinkedIn every day like you say, it’s fantastic and it’s lovely to celebrate people’s success. But again, it can make you feel insecure. I think if you’re considering that change, come off of LinkedIn for a while, don’t go on it. Try to stay away from social media in general. Obviously, unless your job depends on it, try to stay away from it. To sort of clear your head and say, “Well, it doesn’t matter what they’re doing. It only matters what I’m doing.”

And also, I have known in the past some people who have fantastic job titles and great salaries, but ultimately are not happy with their job and what they’re doing. And so, that high salary and job title doesn’t make up for that. It’s not a good trade-off. I think most of us would much rather be, stable financially, of course. You have to be able to afford what you need to afford. But, you’d much rather have a lower salary, a better work-life balance, and be happier at work when you spend eight hours plus there a day, than having a fancy job title just so that others look at you and say, “Oh, that’s a fancy job title.” You can’t compare the two. I think practically coming off of LinkedIn and coming off of anything that makes you compare yourself to other people is my first piece of advice.

Secondly, remember that a nice job title and a high salary aren’t all that you need to make you happy. You need to do something that, like I said before, gives you energy and gives you joy and brings you happiness. You’re not going to get that no matter how high your salary is if you’re not happy in what you’re doing.

Joseph: Alright. Well, that is great advice. I would love to wrap up, Alex, with what you’re doing right now and would just enjoy hearing a little bit more about what you’re up to, both in your role at Prezzybox, and also, can you just give us a sampling of the types of things that you guys sell over there? I’ve been on your website myself, and there’s a very interesting array of products you have on there.

Alex: [28:49] Absolutely. At the moment, as you might expect, because we’re a gift company, we are gearing up to the busiest time of year. It’s already getting busy in terms of Christmas gifts. We do about 50% of our sales during Christmas. Sort of on the run-up to Christmas. Things are super busy right now. We’ve just come back from an event in London, from a press event, where we’ve met with lots of journalists and wonderful influencers. We are just gearing up with our Christmas strategy. We’re trying to gear up for this really, really busy time of year right now.

In terms of what I’m doing specifically, we’re looking at PR campaigns that we can push out for Christmas. And also, we’re doing a lot of copywriting because we’re adding a lot of Christmas products to the site. But, like you say, we do have some pretty awesome stuff. We do like putting names and faces on things. We have like a personalized Toblerone. We have a personalized jar of Marmite. For anyone outside of the UK, it’s a very divisive food, Marmite is. I would urge you to try it. If you can’t, you either love it or you hate it. That’s what we’re doing at the moment. Things are getting very busy.

Joseph: Alright. Very cool. I would encourage people to check out some of the products you have. I browsed around on your joke and novelty gifts. That probably took more time than I would have thought. I was just browsing through that page. You got a lot of really interesting products on there. I definitely recommend people check out Prezzybox.

Alex: [30:18] Thank you.

Alright. Well, thank you so much, Alex, for telling me about your life as a teacher and your shift into the freelance, and then the full-time marketing world. And also, just the importance of doing work that brings you joy, energy, and happiness. Best of luck with your marketing and PR role there at Prezzybox. I hope the upcoming holiday season goes well for you guys.

Alex: [30:39] Me, too. Thank you so much, Joseph. It’s wonderful to speak to you. Thank you.

Joseph: As I hope you heard some useful insights from Alex about being specific about what you’re looking to do next, the importance of climbing the right ladder, and the fact that job titles and salary aren’t everything.

[30:52]

As if making a good impression at work and figuring out where you want your career to head wasn’t wasn’t hard enough, managing a medical condition on top of all is even more challenging. In this episode of the Career Relaunch™ podcast, Erika Russi, a former tax consultant turned data scientist shares her story of interrupting her own career to address her medical condition. We discuss how your health can affect your career choices. During the Mental Fuel® segment, I also describe my own tendencies to overwork and why hustling all the time isn’t necessarily the healthiest habit in the long run.

If you’re someone who’s been working nonstop lately or if you’ve had to deal with emotional or physical challenges yourself, Erika’s story is a good reminder to us all about ensuring we’re always mindful of our health and wellbeing no matter how busy work gets. or if you’ve had to interrupt your career to take care of a health concerns

I first heard about Erika’s career change story in this Muse article, where she discussed how she managed to make this big career change from accountancy to data science through a combination of upskilling, coaching, networking, and finding her inner confidence to overcome imposter syndrome. So we’ll also discuss why having a nontraditional background can be an asset rather than liability, even when entering a field where most people have more linear careers.

Given the nature of what we discussed about how much your health can affect your work and life, Erika wants to encourage people to get vaccinated against Covid-19. As she mentioned during the interview, the long term effects of having Covid (“long Covid”) are very similar to her auto-immune disease, fibromyalgia. Even if you survive Covid, there are long lasting effects after having a strong virus like Covid-19. She also wants to highlight that immunocompromised individuals rely on others being vaccinated. So she hopes her story brings greater awareness about the 7% of the population with an autoimmune disease that may be quietly struggling.

Although I’m aware we have listeners everywhere, you can refer to your local health authorities’ websites to find out how you can get your vaccine if you haven’t done so already. It’s something we all must do in order to protect ourselves and others. Here are a few helpful sites for our top five countries by listenership:

My challenge to you this week is simple, but not easy. I know this because I struggle with it myself. In spite of how busy you are or how busy you think you are, to try and find a way to just go to bed a little bit earlier tonight. Then, stick with that schedule this week. See how you feel. See what impact it has on your work. At the very least, do this to ensure toxins aren’t building up in your brain!

Erika Russi is currently a Data Scientist at IBM after completing a 4-month data science bootcamp at the Flatiron School. Previously, she worked as a tax associate for PriceWaterhouseCoopers with responsibilities that included mergers and acquisitions transaction cost analysis, and as a fund accountant for Credit Suisse where amongst other things she developed accounting enhancements for IT teams. Her family’s originally from Colombia, and these days, in her spare time, she loves going on walks with her recently adopted senior dog, Marmee. You can follow Erika on Twitter.

If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

Music provided by Epidemic Sound

Thanks to Audible for supporting this episode of Career Relaunch. Audible is the premier provider of digital audiobooks, offering over 180,000 audiobook titles for listening anytime and anywhere on your favorite device. Career Relaunch listeners can download a free audiobook download and get 30-day trial at audibletrial.com/careerrelaunch.

Music provided by Epidemic Sound

Teaser (first ~15s): If you’re not already burnt out, you will be burnt out. Your body will find the most inopportune time to make sure that you get the rest that it needs. We only have one body. We only have one life, prioritize that before work.

Joseph: You can get all the show notes from today’s episode at careerrelaunch.net/77. Erika spoke with me from Brooklyn, New York.

Good morning, Erika. Welcome to Career Relaunch. It is great to have you on the show.

Erika: [02:55] Thanks for having me.

Joseph: I was hoping we could just start off by having you give me a snapshot of what has been occupying you recently, both in your personal and professional life.

Erika: [03:07] I’ll start off with my professional life. I’m a data scientist at IBM. I work with trying to get more data awareness, make more data-driven decisions for an internal team. I’m also working on natural language processing. I’m working on a chatbot for internal teams at IBM.

Joseph: What exactly does a data scientist do?

Erika: [03:33] That’s a great question because not a lot of people have a definitive answer. It’s one of those very hype terms right now, so I think it means something different to different people. In a general sense, it usually means someone that codes in Python OR, and they do some machine learning. They also could be doing some dashboards, be putting dashboards together, be involved in data pipelines. We talk a lot about big data, and that just means someone that’s able to get a handle on these giant streams of data to really understand what’s going on, to be able to detect patterns to help people make decisions.

Joseph: Very interesting. Well, I do want to get into how you ended up getting into this path. But, I think I would be very interested in also just hearing what’s been occupying you, just on the personal side of things outside of work.

Erika: [03:07] It’s a little tough to share just because I’m such a private person but I do think it is my responsibility to share. I have an autoimmune disease called “fibromyalgia.” It means I tend to have a lot of widespread pain all around my body. It mostly focuses on my upper body. You’ll also hear maybe people have brain fog. It just it makes me a little tired, makes it harder for me to understand things, or to just really focus on things. It’s really similar to long COVID. When I spoke to my rheumatologist, he pretty much said that fibromyalgia is long COVID. It is very similar to what hundreds of thousands of people are currently experiencing with COVID, and it happened in a similar way for me that I had a virus and my body overreacted with an immune response.

This past year was really tough for me. The summer was really rough because heat is one of my triggers. I just had a really awful summer, pain-wise, and lack of focus. That’s really what I’ve been dealing with this summer. I’m happy to share all this, especially because I’m sure so many people are going through it and it may not be obvious when someone’s going through it. I want to share that to spread awareness.

Joseph: Thank you very much for sharing that, Erika. I know that we actually tried to record this earlier, but I know you had a surgery recently. Is that right?

Erika: [06:13] Yeah.

Joseph: What did that involve? Was that related to the fibromyalgia?

Erika: [06:14] It’s hard to tell if it was related. Part of fibromyalgia is also the inability to sleep, have restful sleep. I was having a hard time getting restful sleep as well. I think part of it was related to my nose, for lack of a better word. I did get a septoplasty and a turbinate reduction. That means my deviated septum was corrected and turbinates, which are the filters at the back of the nose, they were reduced. The idea is that this will help me breathe better and it will help me sleep better.

It’s tough with an autoimmune disease because there’s so many moving parts. You don’t really know if it’s a mechanical issue or if it’s your body, your predisposition to something. Hopefully, this will just help me, on a more general level, get better rest and reduce the amount of issues associated with fibro.

Joseph: Hopefully, the surgery helps and I hope that helps you get back on your feet. I know that in our exchanges over our email, I know you have had a tough few months here. Again, I appreciate your willingness to come on to the show, and also just your willingness to share a little bit about your personal story. Before we dive into your full career story, I do want to talk about how this has affected you in your career. Can you also just give a little glimpse about your family and where you grew up? Because when we spoke before, I understand your parents are Colombian, and they moved to the United States when you were pretty young. Is that right?

Erika: [07:50] Yeah. I was born in Colombia, and we came to the states when I was 6, in 1992. It was a violent time in Colombia, and my dad had lost his job. We were definitely looking for a place with more opportunity. As cliché as that sounds, it really was the best decision for us.

Joseph: Let’s kind of take this one piece at a time here. I’d like to go back in time a little bit more before you were working as a data scientist of user behavior at IBM. I know you have always done that. Way back in the day, you were actually working in tax and tax consulting. Could you just take me back to the time that you were working at PricewaterhouseCoopers? And then, we can move forward from there.

Erika: [08:35] I was an accounting undergrad, and I did my master’s in tax. And then, I got a position at PwC in tax consulting. It was a pretty stressful job as PwC, one of the big four accounting firms. You go in and you’re hired because you’re young, and you can work long hours, and that was definitely part of the job. It was also really stressful. It ultimately wasn’t the industry for me, but I’m still very grateful for the time that I have there. I did learn so much about project management, very basic, soft skills, like writing emails and just dealing with teams. That was really invaluable at that time I had at PwC.

Joseph: What triggered you to move on from doing that kind of work?

Erika: [09:26] I was so desperate to get out when I was at PwC. At that point, I had been diagnosed with the fibromyalgia. I was in my mid-20s, and I had gone on medical leave for two years. When I had returned, I returned to the same role. It was just really hard to manage that kind of job with what was going on with me, personally, with my health situation. And also, ultimately, I was really unhappy in that role. I was looking for a job in accounting. It didn’t really matter if it was in tax or otherwise. I got a job at Credit Suisse as an accountant, non-tax accountant. That’s how I transitioned there.

Joseph: Now, you mentioned the medical leave. This was the time when you heard the diagnosis of fibromyalgia. Is that right?

Erika: [10:21] Yep. It was 2013.

Joseph: I see. Can you just take me back to the moment when you heard that news? What ran through your head after you heard that?

Erika: [10:29] To a certain extent, relief, because they definitely felt like it was a little crazy. I was so young to be so sick and bedridden, really, at that point. Like I said, I was working really long hours. It was really stressful. And then, on the weekends, I would just sleep the entire time and I couldn’t really figure out what was wrong with me. I was in a lot of pain. Work was really, really hard for me. I assumed it was related to work. I assumed I was really burned out. But, I went to the doctor just to make sure that maybe it was something else, maybe I had Lyme disease. There were so many different things that could be. We ran through a bunch of tests. Pretty much just trying to exclude everything else like celiac disease, or diabetes, or arthritis. When I got that diagnosis, it was a relief in the sense that I knew it wasn’t in my head. There were a few things I could do. It’s not a curable thing, but at least now I had something that I could google, or I could figure out what the next steps were.

Joseph: I’m just trying to imagine because you were on medical leave for a couple years. Is that right?

Erika: [11:47] Yeah. For two years.

Joseph: For two years. During those two years, you go from working in quite, I’m going to imagine, quite an intense nonstop role at PwC. You’re working professional, white-collar, going to the office every day. And then, you’re on medical leave for two years. What was that like? How did your perspectives evolve during this time about life and also work?

Erika: [12:13] Yeah. On the one hand, it was something I needed just to take a step back because I didn’t know what was going on with my body. I knew I had fibromyalgia, but at the same time, I felt like I had no control of what was going on. I couldn’t really manage it. Like I said, work was always really tough. Even, there was a point where I tried to cut down my hours, but it still felt like the pressure to work longer hours that even if I was signed up for six, I would still work eight hours. I had simultaneous carpal tunnel syndrome at this time, too. I was wearing these ergonomic gloves, and I had golfer’s elbow, too. I would wear straps on my elbows. It felt so much more extreme for such a, potentially, simple disease. It felt really straightforward that I had fibromyalgia, but it just felt like the symptoms kept getting worse. Of course, they did. I was not taking rest. I was really stressed out. I wasn’t really addressing the issues. Medically, they gave me the time to address everything I needed to address. The issues with my elbow, my diet, the lack of stress. It just gave me the time to really figure out what I needed. Physical therapy, too. I would go to physical therapy a lot. It really was the moment to try to figure out a strategy for what I was going to do when I needed to inevitably return to work.

Joseph: The other thing that I’m wondering about here is because I know there was a period of time before you went out on medical leave. Sounds like you got a little bit of space to reflect and recover from what was going on.

Erika: [14:04] Yeah. Absolutely.

Joseph: But before you went on medical leave, you were also experiencing a lot of these things in the workplace. What was that like? Did people notice?

Erika: [14:13] Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. It was really tough. Especially, in that environment, you’re expected to be at 100% at all times. “If you’re not at 100%, then you shouldn’t be there,” was I think the unspoken rule. There were some people, my colleagues that were really honest with me. In hindsight, I do appreciate it. They said that, “You’ve got diagnosed with this. That sucks. But, it’s just going to get worse as you get older. If you’re going to make it, you really need to push through now because you’re young. You have the ability to do that now. You won’t have the ability to do that later. You got to put your head down and just go through it.”

Which at the time was really hard to hear. Especially if it felt like I had no mentorship to help me through that. I had no guidance. It was tough. I think people expected kind of the push-through mentality, and that ultimately wasn’t something I could do. I did have to go on medical leave.

Joseph: I want to shift gears here a little bit. Because I know that you went on medical leave. It sounds like that’s what you very much needed at that moment in your life. What happened next for you? I know you mentioned you went over to Credit Suisse. What was the experience of going back into a role in accountancy, post-medical leave, and post-finding out that you have this autoimmune disease?

Erika: [15:43] After medical leave, I did return to my role at PwC for another two years. I was able to better manage, I’d say, at that point, what was going on. But like I said, that role was not for me and I was really desperate to get out. I think the first job offer I got, I left and I went to Credit Suisse, which was a lot less stressful in experience. It was a more straightforward accounting role. I wasn’t doing tax consulting or dealing with clients or consulting projects. It was just a fund accounting. We were looking at funds managed by Credit Suisse, and we would do the accounting for that.

Joseph: I’m just trying to imagine, Erika, what it must have been like to get this diagnosis, to have to take a significant chunk of time off from work to basically take care of yourself and to recover, your rollback into the office, and you’re back at your laptop, and you’re back doing accountancy work. Was that surreal at all for you to go from the medical leave back into your day job, and being back in the office, and back into the routine? What was that like for you? Did that feel weird at all in any way to you?

Erika: [17:02] Yeah. I know what you mean. I think the surrealism of it was kind of overshadowed by the need for a routine and the need to feel like I was contributing something. The good thing about my fibromyalgia, and especially having it so young, is it made me so appreciative of so many things like basic health care, the importance of rest and sleeping, and good diet. It kept things in perspective for me. I knew I wasn’t having a life-or-death job, like people in the medical industry for example. If anyone ever stressed out, or if anyone ever yelled or maybe crossed the line over something really done at work, it always felt really unnecessary.

Joseph: Yeah.

Erika: [17:59] That was always really helpful to know that at the end of the day, none of this really matters. This is all just numbers. No one’s going to die. We’re not performing life-saving surgery, so it was great. But I think I needed work again, especially after my medical leave just to feel like I was doing something, I was contributing to a larger need or a larger project. That was really lacking when I was on medical leave. Just constantly focused on what was wrong with me instead of distracting myself with work, which was so important as well.

Joseph: Yeah. I mean, just going back to the keeping things in perspective. It just made me think of one of my first corporate jobs where I was working at The Clorox Company, and I was working on the Glad business. I was working on the marketing team. My job was basically to drive demand for Glad trash bags in the market. I remember one of my first managers, her name was Linda Lori. When I first started there she said, “Just remember, there are no trash bag emergencies here. Nothing really bad is going to happen to you or anybody else in the world. So, go home at a decent time and don’t work yourself to death here. Yes, it’s competitive environment, but there are no trash bag emergencies.” I think that’s sort of what you’re getting at here.

Erika: [19:15] That’s right.

Joseph: You’ve moved on to Credit Suisse now, and it’s providing you with some routine. Around 2018, I understand you went through another transition. Can you just describe what happened to you in 2018?

Erika: [19:27] Yeah, I laugh about it now because it’s funny, in hindsight. This was right after my birthday. Had gone away for the weekend, and something that the team at Credit Suisse did is whenever it was someone’s birthday, they would either surprised them with a cake, or buy them cupcakes, or donuts. And then, sometimes, have a little “Happy Birthday” singing. I remember going in to work that morning and getting a call from my boss to come over to a room in a separate building. I just weirdly assumed, “Oh! It’s a birthday thing.” It’s a little early for a birthday thing, but yeah. It’s a birthday thing. I start walking over. And then, I’m like, “No. It’s too early for a birthday thing.” But, I had talked to him about potentially getting promoted this year. Maybe that’s what it’s about. I walk over, and then I go in and I see it’s my boss and some other woman. I’m like, “No. I’m about to get laid off.”

Joseph: You knew when you walked in?

Erika: [20:31] Yeah. I knew right when I walked in. I saw how nervous my boss was. I got laid off. It was very surreal at the moment. I thought they were kidding at first because I had just thought, “Oh! You’re going to celebrate my birthday.” I didn’t think that was going to happen and it happened, and never expected it.

Joseph: That’s around September 2018.

Erika: [20:56] Yep.

Joseph: What did you do next? You find out this news, go home that day. Like, what’s running through your head, and what did you do next?

Erika: [21:03] Yeah. The emotions came quickly. At first, I thought I was the only one getting laid off. I thought it was more of like a firing situation. Maybe I did something wrong because I had to leave the building right away. But, I found out it was a bunch of us getting laid off. The first week, I went through it, let myself experience these emotions. I really was expecting my boss, at the time who I was really close with, I was expecting him to reach out and say something like, “It was great working with you,” or “I’m sorry that’s happened.” He never did, actually. But, I dealt with that first.

And then, after that, luckily, I have a very supportive husband who just said, “Do what you got to do. Either look for another job, take the time you need.” Ultimately, what I decided, my plan the whole time, was to continue taking Python courses. I had started taking a Python course online on Coursera.

Joseph: It’s a programming language.

Erika: [22:00] Yeah. Programming language, yeah. I really loved it. And so, I wanted to continue doing that. I said, “Okay. Well, I got a little severance. Maybe I can do this full time with a lot more accountability,” I need to complete classes, and I’m paying for classes so it would be good to just take a boot camp style. That was in September, and by October, I was starting a data science boot camp with a focus, not only on Python, but on overall data science. That’s how I started a boot camp.

Joseph: Okay. This was at the Flatiron School. Is that right? Okay. At this point, are you thinking about trying to land a job that requires Python programming skills?

Erika: [22:43] The amount of time was so short. I didn’t even know what I was expecting. I just knew that I wanted to do some Python programming, and I was just going to do this boot camp. Maybe I’d go back into accounting and just have a new set of skills under my belt, and that would be that. I would just continue in accounting. I did not think that I was actually going to become a data scientist. I figured I would just learn data science but probably wasn’t for me. Because to be a data scientist, you need to be a genius. You need to know so much math.

Joseph: Right.

Erika: [23:18] It didn’t cross my mind until the very end of the program that, “Oh! I’m actually going to be the data scientist now.”

Joseph: When we spoke before, you mentioned to me just how you found your job. Could you just take me through how in the world do you go from being an accountant, then going on medical leave, coming back, going to another account. I’m imagining that you’re quite seemingly potentially siloed in this accountancy world. How do you then make the transition from that, into finding a job as a data scientist?

Erika: [23:45] It really felt unreal. But, looking back on it, it does make sense. How I found the IBM role is one of my classmates in the boot camp, she got a role at IBM working for their internal search team. Part of her larger department, they were also looking for data scientists, and she referred me. It was one of a couple of classmates that she referred. I landed the job. I was more amazed than anyone. I really didn’t think that that was going to happen. I mentioned that in hindsight, it makes a lot of sense. I do think that the skills that I developed everywhere else, whether it’s just basic Excel, basic presentation, basic working with the team, these are skills that some of my classmates straight out of college really didn’t have. I was able to use those skills as an asset, really. When I was interviewing, and to this day, I think it’s amazing to me how much more I use my soft skills than the technical skills that I’m constantly developing and leverage soft skills all the time. It makes sense looking back on it that I was able to do that.

Joseph: Was there anything in particular that you learned about the job market? Since you were able to successfully, and very almost suddenly, land this job in such a distant different area from what you were doing before. What did you learn about the job market and how it works?

Erika: [25:19] Not to sound repetitive, but I think that that was really the biggest takeaway. That I’m competing with data science PhDs, and people that are recent graduates and master’s in Applied Math, et cetera. These are highly technical people. I can’t compete with them on a technical level. It’s just four months out of boot camp is not going to cut it compared to the potential decade of work that they’ve done in this field. They don’t compete in that sense. I compete by using everything else I learned at my other jobs. It really is harder to teach soft skills to someone than it is to teach technical skills. I use that to my advantage. I knew that it’s if you’re a manager, data science machine learning engineering manager, you don’t want to have to teach someone how to write an email or how to make a presentation, or how to filter down relevant information when you’re making a presentation to a higher up. I knew that I had those skills, and that’s really what I showcased when I was interviewed.

Joseph: The last thing I was hoping to talk with you about before we wrap up with some of your learnings is just what you’re focused on right now at IBM. What exactly is it that you do at IBM as a data scientist? I know you mentioned the chatbots before, most machine learning. Can you just tell me a little bit more about your day-to-day job these days?

Erika: [26:42] Sure. I can’t mention too much of the technical stuff because we are an internal-facing team. One of my favorite parts of the job is really trying to distill machine learning or data science and to really just straightforward concepts. It’s an industry that tends to be a little gatekeeper-y, and use a lot of really fancy language, like machine learning and deep learning, and there’s no need for that. I mean data science and algorithms surround us in so many things that we do. I think it’s so important that people understand how that process works, and how it is that a machine does the machine learning, how those patterns get identified. They’re just looping people in whether it’s content writer, designer, or higher up that isn’t really familiar with the specifics of the technology. It’s just really boiling that down for them, and just really explaining it in straightforward language so that it’s less of a black box. I think it’s really satisfying and I love that part of my job. That I can make it less gatekeeper-y and make sure that people have a say and understand what’s going on because it really is all around us. Everything that we’re doing with algorithms and data science.

Joseph: Very interesting, yeah. That is a world that I know virtually nothing about. You’re absolutely right about the need for there to be people out there who can explain it in plain simple English to those of us who are not involved in that sector. That’s very interesting.

Erika: [28:17] As someone who really literally just learned it, it is so important for me, too. Because it felt like it was so unattainable to learn all of these things, and it wasn’t! I’m here as the data scientist. I may not be as nearly as technically advanced as other people, but I’m still able to code and contribute. It’s important to make sure that other people have a say in the things that we’re doing.

Joseph: I think that goes back to one of your earlier points about the fact that you didn’t have the traditional background that maybe other data scientists have. But because of that, not in spite of that, but because of that, you’re actually very well positioned to explain this to people outside of your function. Whereas, somebody who’s maybe lived and breathed data science their whole life, they may not be able to extract themselves from it and explain it in a way that’s digestible to the average layperson out there.

Erika: [29:13] Exactly. Yeah, very well said.

Joseph: Well, the last thing I was hoping to wrap up with, Erika, was just some of the lessons that you’ve learned along the way of your very interesting and winding career journey. I know you mentioned the medical condition that you had to manage, and that you continue to have to manage in your career, and also your life. I know that there are people out there who are also dealing with either a physical disability, or they’re having to take a leave of absence, or even these days, quite commonly, emotional challenges that are really taking over their day-to-day life and professional life. But, what would you say to other people out there who might be struggling with an emotional or physical condition, but have maybe just had to either shove it to the side or to just self-manage it? What would you say to people out there who might be struggling with something challenging in their careers?

Erika: [30:02] First, I’d say, “I’m so sorry.” That’s really tough. It really is such a challenge. I don’t want to pretend that everyone has the luxury of taking two years of absence. That’s definitely not the case for everyone who’s incredibly lucky to do that. But, I’d say right now, especially in the context of a pandemic, to prioritize your health in whatever way you can. Whether that’s if you have the ability to take some time off, to really be able to take a step back and listen to your body. Figure out what’s going on. I don’t think pushing through to continue working under the circumstances that you’re going through is healthy. I think if you’re not already burnt out, you will be burnt out. Your body will find the most inopportune time to make sure that you get the rest that it needs. Regardless of whether you need to have a super important presentation or need to finish up a project, your body will decide for you. To whatever extent you can, please prioritize your health. It’s so important. We only have one body. We only have one life. And if nothing else COVID has taught us that it is so important to prioritize that before work. Health is always before work.

Joseph: Yeah. That is a very good reminder I think to all of us because I think we can all get in this. I guess, they actually kind of like in popular media and in movies, they almost glamorize this hustle culture, and that you got to work hard to go to achieve all your goals. You have to finish what you started, and yet, there’s a cost to all of that. You’re right! If you don’t pay attention to your body, at some point, your body will force you to pay attention. Thanks for that advice. When you look back on your career change, is there anything that you wish that you had known about making a major career pivot that you now know?

Erika: [32:08] I really wish I would have believed in myself more. I think this has been a humbling career transition for sure. Every day at work, I definitely feel like I don’t know anything. It’s constant imposter syndrome, but I’m learning. I’m still going through it, and I’m still figuring things out. I doubted myself so much at the beginning because like I said, I was comparing myself to people that had years and years of technical experience and that really wasn’t the correct route, I think. It is the most rewarding thing to be able to go from, “Oh, wow! I don’t know anything. This is an entirely new topic and subject,” to being able to code just a little bit in it, and then finally really understanding the concept. It’s the most rewarding experience to go from novice to — not expert, but less of a novice. It has been the best part.

Joseph: Having been through this career change, what’s one thing that you’ve learned about yourself?

Erika: [33:13] That I could be happy at work. Obviously biased by my own very specific experiences, but I just always assumed that work was just work, and misery was always attached to it. But, you weren’t really ever going to enjoy work because work was really just for a paycheck. But, the fact that I really love what I do, that I’m constantly learning, is such a blessing and I really never thought that that would be the case.

Joseph: Well, thank you very much, Erika, for taking us through your journey and all the ups and downs. I appreciate you getting into some of those details related to your medical condition. I just wanted to thank you for telling us more about how you actually can stand out and be effective in a role, even if you feel like you don’t have the traditional background of a typical person in that role. The impact your medical condition has had on your career. Ultimately, how you managed to pull off a major career pivot in spite of your condition, and all the challenges you faced along the way. I hope you bounce back from your surgery and continue to make a full recovery. Also, continue to manage your condition the best you can. Thanks, again, for coming on to the show.

Erika: [34:27] Thank you so much. Yeah, it was my absolute pleasure. Thank you, Joseph.

Have you ever had an idea for product you feel should exist but does not exist? For some, they would just leave it at that, but in Tommy Kelly’s case, when he struggled to find a natural, sparkling caffeinated beverage in the supermarkets, he decided to create one himself. In episode 76 of the Career Relaunch® podcast, Tommy Kelly, a former nuclear plant engineer turned cofounder of the organic sparkling drinks company Sound, shares his thoughts on figuring out the ideal time to make your carer pivot, building your ideas patiently and persistently, and finding a great cofounder.

I thought Tommy would be a great guest for the show because he made quite a radical career change, which I hope can inspire you to also make a change. Also, he has a firm belief that career changes, while incredibly daunting, can also be life-changing in a good way. He wanted to share his story as a way of inspiring others to turn their side hobbies into something more. I hope you enjoy hearing his journey as much as I did.

My challenge to you is to fully acknowledge and attempt to overcome one of the daunting, negative emotions you may be feeling as you navigate your own career transition. Whether related to sadness, fear, pride, embarrassment, shame, or disappointment, try to give it a label so you can begin to process it.

While no magic bullet exists to tackle any challenging emotion in the midst of a big transition, half the battle is being able to identify it whenever it inevitably shows up during your journey.

Tommy Kelly is the cofounder of Sound known known for its unsweetened sparkling drinks that create unique flavors through a combination of Certified Organic teas, botanicals and fruit extracts. A former engineer at the Indian Point Nuclear Energy Center, Tommy came up with the idea for Sound inside the plant to satisfy his own desire for a crisp, carbonated, and caffeinated beverage that wasn’t filled with all of the sugar and artificial ingredients in soda. So he started carbonating tea. And that idea went from hobby to business in 2015, after teaming up with his former colleague, Salim Najjar. After gaining distribution in Whole Foods, they made the official jump to launch Sound in 2016. Follow Sound on Facebook and Instagram.

If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

BrandYourself offers simple tools and services to help control what people find when they Google you. To clean up, protect, and improve how you look online, visit BrandYourself.com and use promo code ‘RELAUNCH’ to get 50% off a Premium membership.

Teaser (first ~15s): Your career, in a lot of ways, is a security blanket. It’s what provides income and stability. Saying that you’re moving on from that, whether you paved that career or not, is incredibly daunting. That was definitely the scariest thing for me.

Joseph: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I would love to talk about your entire career going back to your time working in nuclear power and then we’ll talk about your time as a founder. Could you first of all, just kick it off, by giving us a sense of what you have been focused on. What’s been keeping you busy in your career and your life?

Tommy: In life, definitely family. I have two young boys, a 2 ½ and 5-month-old. That’s been a lot and I have my wife, Lauren as well. I’m definitely prioritizing time with them. Career-wise, I founded a beverage company about six years ago which I sure we’ll dive into more detail. That’s been pretty much it. Life has been family, Sound and sleeping soundly while I can.

Joseph: How has your life been affected by COVID-19 and you can take that in any direction whether it relates to your work at Sound or even just balancing work with family life and your two sons.

Tommy: I think for myself, it’s been less of an interruption than maybe for most people. The reason being that I was working from home prior to COVID and our own team is very much remote. That didn’t really change. I was already set up for that. It’s been great in a sense where there is that lack of commute and I was able to spend time with kids and balance that life and career. Outside of that, it really just forced us to kind of all make our circles smaller and spend more time together. I would say that that’s really been the positive of it but from a career perspective going to the office hasn’t really changed.

Joseph: I want to go back and talk a little bit more about your transition into working in the space of entrepreneurship and more about Sound. I’d like to first go back in time. I know you haven’t always been the co-founder of an organic sparkling teas company. Way back in the day, you were actually working as an engineer at a nuclear powerplant. Could you tell me a little bit about that chapter of your career? And then, we’ll move forward from there.

Tommy: Yes, the unlikely transition. I was working as an engineer at a nuclear powerplant which is north of New York City and Westchester County. It was one of those things where in college, I was studying mechanical engineering and graduate with a degree there. I graduated in 2009 just as the bottom was falling out of the financial markets. There were a few different opportunities career wise that were presented, and this was one. I actually interned there previously. It was the best opportunity so I took the job. It was definitely a unique career to get into at the time.

Joseph: I’d say, I’m guessing that most people listening to this, including me, have not stepped foot into a nuclear powerplant. Could you give us a glimpse into what its like to work in one?

Tommy: I actually worked in an office building. I was an engineer but I was not in the plant at all times. I was often asked to go into the plant to inspect heat exchangers, valves—whatever it might be. I would spend 80% of my time in a cubicle. If you didn’t look out the window and see a nuclear powerplant right in front of you, it could have been anywhere but when you’re in the plant, it feels like it’s a very—it’s almost like a clean basement. You have boilers, piping, valves. We didn’t get too deep in on the nuclear side. Generally just one month a year during reviewing outages. It’s not a Homer Simpson situation. I think many people envision it like that.

Joseph: Right. What exactly was your role there? You mentioned you focused on mechanical engineering in your undergraduate studies. What exactly were you responsible for at Indian Point?

Tommy: I had primarily two roles there. The first was on the preventive maintenance side. I was responsible for managing and optimizing a lot of the testing of equipment. It’s like if you get your oil changed or get your car inspected. It’s the same idea. It’s how can we test and inspect the pumps and valves and the equipment to ensure that they’re not failing because it’s always more expensive to replace something that just maintain it. I shouldn’t say always but often times that’s the case. So, that was the first, the preventive maintenance side. Most recently, the career that I actually transitioned from, I was working as an engineer in the service water system which essentially took water from the Hudson River. We pull it into the plant, into the piping system to remove heat. It was just a lot of inspecting heat exchangers, maintaining the pipes and the systems related there.

Joseph: Okay, so, you are spending your time focused on maintenance. Sounds like you are working on things that I know very little about like heat exchangers. How did you then go from focusing on that sort of work to starting to think about this drinks company that you eventually went on to found?

Tommy: It was one of those things where I knew I didn’t want to be doing what I was doing. I just didn’t know what I did want to do. At the time, I was applying for MBA programs. I was also applying for jobs in the financial markets and something that I felt like had some relevance to engineering. I was applying also for engineering jobs, studying. I was kind of placing these little bets on every direction to see what felt interesting. One of those, at the time, I was carbonating tea just as a bored engineer at a nuclear powerplant. I said, you know, I was surrounded by soda drinkers and I was drinking tea and sparkling water one day and I was like, I wish I could combine these two things as a soda alternative. It would be cold, carbonated, and caffeinated like a soda but organic, unsweetened. It would be lacking all those chemical ingredients that are often found in most big soda brands. That was something that was just a hobby. I knew nothing about the industry. It just really evolved into something over time.

Joseph: It sounds interesting because it sounds like it just sort of started off as you trying to create something that you couldn’t find in the marketplace. How did you start to think that maybe you could be on to something and that this could go beyond something for yourself and maybe other people might enjoy it too?

Tommy: I can vividly remember sitting at the dinner table with my wife, Lauren, who was a registered dietician—she still is but she worked at a hospital setting at the time. In parallel with me doing sparkling tea, she would talk about patients who were just so uneducated. There was this predatory marketing where they would say, “Oh, I don’t drink soda, I just drink ginger ale,” or “No, I don’t drink soda. I drink apple juice.” There was just this kind of fire starting to build where it was like, this company needs to exist. There should be beverage companies and consumer companies out there that are advocating for human health and not just making money off of really clever marketing. That was kind of the convergence of where it was like, “okay, this makes sense.” It’s an idea and people seemed to like it and I think it was in those conversations where the passion for it started to build. I was never passionate about tea per se but the other thing in terms of positively impacting lives was something I felt very much passionate about. That was really the catalyst that took it from idea into more of, “How do we make this into a business?”

Joseph: I see. You mentioned earlier that you didn’t really know anything about the market, or how to launch a brand. I know that there are people out there who are listening to the show sometimes and they think, “Oh, I’ve got an idea except that I have no idea how to move forward with it.” How did you take this idea of something you were brewing up in your kitchen and turn it into a commercialized product?

Tommy: It took a lot of time. It’s definitely worth mentioning that my co-founder and business partner at Sound, Salim, who was also an engineer at Indian Point. We worked within the same small 8-person group. Between the two of us, I started it and was creating the recipes and brought it to him. He tried it. I started doing that in 2012 and we didn’t launch the product until 2015. It was a very long time where, between the two of us, we were just digging deeper into the market. We were talking to suppliers. We were figuring out how to produce this thing. It didn’t really exist in the market anywhere. No one was producing our product—an unsweetened sparkling tea. It took a very long time. We just let it grow organically. We did a little bit of a market study. We put it out there and see if people like it or not. We put it out in a couple of stores and see how it sells. It just slowly, slowly built.

Joseph: One of the things you mentioned was going to suppliers. Were you literally just looking them up and just making appointments with these people and pitch your idea to them?

Tommy: More or less. That was actually something early on, that definitely inspired us to really name the brand “Sound.” Actually, early on, our brand was called, “Sodterra.” That was what we launched it as. It was intended to mean “soda of the earth.” 90% of people couldn’t pronounce it but at the time we would be getting these ingredients and spreadsheets from certain suppliers, and it might be a peach flavor and it wouldn’t say peach anywhere on it. So that was a wakeup call to us about the industry in general which drove us towards “Sound” and “Sound” ingredients, organic extracts and other clean ingredients. Going back to the question, we were just asking around, reaching out on the internet, trying to find people who would sold [ingredients]. I remember just buying loose tea off the internet thinking that’s how you do it. One conversation led to another and the dominos ultimate start falling and you eventually get to the supplier who you should really be talking to. Unless you know someone in the space who can really make those connections for you, it’s a lot of just detective work, really.

Joseph: I want to shift gears a little bit. We’ll continue to talk about this topic of Sound. By the way, I love the name. I used to work in branding myself and there’s a lot of names I don’t like. The name “sound” works really well.

Tommy: Sodterra might have been one you don’t like.

Joseph: I don’t mind it! I like clever fanciful names out there. I want to talk a little bit about your transition. You said in 2012 to 2015, you were spending a few years trying to figure out if this thing has legs. Were you still working in the powerplant at this point in time? And if so, how did you balance those two endeavors?

Tommy: I was working there until January 2015. It ended up being about 2 and a half years from the time the concept started to the time I actually moved full time into running Sound with Salim. I remember one time specifically, I was doing a demo at my lunch break, doing a sampling at a restaurant nearby. I drove there during my lunch break and Salim called me. The plant had shut down and they needed all hands on deck. He left the hard hat for me on the stairwell and I ran straight to the plant but we were really using every spare minute to try to row this business. It was very much a great thing about the job itself too. It wasn’t demanding in a sense where we could be out the door at 3 or 4 o’clock and spend 4 or 5 hours a day or more later that day working on the business.

Joseph: How does one decide to move from working on an idea with, in this case, a colleague, Salim, to formalizing that relationship and actually becoming co-founders. I know that finding a co-founder is something that is not easy to do. A lot of people will have a falling out with a co-founder. How did you guys decide, “Hey, this is something I want to work on together, formally, long term.”

Tommy: That’s a great question. Salim and I—I think it was the perfect situation where…I think it’s really hard to start a business wit your best friend. There’s always going to be tension. There’s always going to be disagreements that are hard. The closer you are to someone, maybe, at least, the more that egos can play in. Salim and I were very close at work but we also had very complementary personalities. I think we truly saw the value in each other’s skill sets. I started, obviously, the concept and I was protective over it in terms of letting people in. So, it took a little while but Salim, if you knew him, is just an amazing guy and it really just positively impacts the business and me personally. He really did complement a lot of the skills that I knew. I think for starters, the single think to look at is where…if you’re a single person starting a business you need to look inward and ask “where are my weaknesses? Where do I need help? Where am I not good at? Am I good or bad at sales, marketing or whatever it might be?” If the person you trust is complementary to you and you can really appreciate each other and add value, to me, that’s the perfect scenario.

Joseph: Can you take me back to the moment when you decided that you were going to leave your job and work full time on Sound?

Tommy: It was late 2014. We got the product into Whole Foods and we picked up distribution. The time was right where we were like, “Okay, we need to stay through to the end of 2014 to get our bonuses and all that good stuff.” At that point, we had determined that the business has legs. There’s something here. We need to really invest into this to give it a chance and invest out time. There’s only so far that we’re going to take if we were working for 5 hours a day part time and being distracted. We made that decision, I think around the latter half of 2014. From the timing perspective, we were like, “Let’s finish the year. Let’s maximize what we can take from the bonus perspective and all that good stuff.” We were milking as much as we could there. So, there were actually 2,000 people on the site and there was only 8 of us working as a group where Salim and I worked together. We both had to break the news to the same boss. He actually was going to Lebanon. He’s Lebanese. We decided he would quit a couple of weeks before me. So, it kind of put me in an awkward spot. Back-to-back, two weeks in a row, we went to the same guy saying that we were quitting to start a beverage company. So that was a bit awkward. That was the scariest part of the whole thing, just breaking the news.

Joseph: It’s never an easy thing to resign but to know that you’re doing it right after somebody else in you team has done it is even tougher. Just to talk a little bit now about your journey at Sound. When you look back on, let’s say the first week after you reigned from the powerplant, and you and Salim were thinking about this thing, what was that like? What concerned you the most? What excited you the most?

Tommy: I think at that point, it was very much, “you don’t know what you don’t know” mode. In terms of what excited us, that was the easy thing. There’s an infinite runway. We were going to sell the business for billions of dollars in 3 years. That’s what was happening. So, that was what was exciting. The scary thing was just along the way and you figure out, “okay, this is actually incredibly hard.” This is something where it’s a unique product. It’s in line with trends. People are going to buy it. The scary thing was when people didn’t buy it. And you’re like, “Okay, what did I just do?” But that said, we continued to reiterate and there were enough people that loved it. We knew something was there. There was just improvements needed to be made from a packaging perspective, formulation, or whatever it might be. But I think that was the only scary thing about it in the early days.

Joseph: Can you just take me through how you then got this product onto shelves? A really big barrier for a lot of smaller brands is distribution and major retailers. How did you go about doing that?

Tommy: I think we initially grew up, most of us, in Duchess County in New York. So, about an hour and a half in New York City. There was a local distributor there that sold healthy dairy products. They did egg, milk, a lot of refrigerated food and beverage items too. They worked with Whole Foods. It was one of those, chicken or the egg things where you have to go back and forth. We were able to find those Whole Foods buyer and say, “Hey, if this distributor would start distributing our produce would you pick it up?” And we need to go to the distributor and say, “Hey if Whole Foods picks it up, will you distribute it?” It’s kind of just inching along those conversations to a point where ultimately they said, “Sure, we’ll give it a chance.” And a Whole Foods distributor picked it up. Prior to that, were able to sell it to a friend who had a deli but that’s not really moving the needle. The sort of getting it on the shelf was the big win for us was getting it on the Whole Foods shelf in the north east.

Joseph: Before we talk about some of the lessons you learned along the way, I just have to ask you about the product itself. I was just looking at your flavors out there which are very unique. You got things like rose tea with lime and cardamom, green tea with grapefruit and mint. How did you guys decide on the flavor combinations?

Tommy: Going back to the early days, the products were very much framed around function. Our first three flavors were chamomile, Yerba Mate. We had a flavor called, white tea that doesn’t exist anymore. But the idea was first around kind of how you used it within your day. The chamomile was the calm, and the white tea was refresh, and the Yerba Mate was called alive. It was highly caffeinated. So it was different flavors that you would drink through out your day. We started first with the base ingredient hence, the chamomile, rose tea, green tea or Yerba Mate. We were really looking at first, from a caffeinated versus a non-caffeinated perspective. And then also looking at trends. Rose tea was very on trend. It was unique and something that you don’t really see on the market. And then, we have an advisor that we brought in, probably about a year into the business, who still works with us now. We bring him general ideas and he’s the one who is a little bit more in the weaves (?) on flavor and understanding…he came up with the idea that well, cardamom and lime would pair really well with rose tea. It would kind of have a middle eastern concept. We would try a ton of different flavor variations but generally speaking, we start with one base ingredient and a complementary botanical ingredient like lavender or cardamom. There’s the fruit extract too. The fruit component is what we felt like pulled it a little bit more mainstream. Someone would be able to see vanilla, lime or grapefruit. We wanted it to feel approachable but also unique enough that it wouldn’t be just like lemon sparkling water or lime that you’d find anywhere.

Joseph: As I’m listening to this, Tommy, you sound very much in your element. If I hadn’t know that you worked in a completely different industry before, I would just assume that you’ve been working in the food and beverage industry for a really long time. How much of your past experiences in the nuclear powerplant end up playing a part, if at all, in your work at Sound now?

Tommy: I think at the nuclear powerplant, I have to say, very little. That said, I think it’s just the passions and the way my mind works and Salim as well, that both drove us to pursue careers in engineering. It’s very much about resourcefulness and the mindset that there’s a solution to every problem. It’s always having that mindset and continuing to learn. We both love to learn, improve, and iterate. I think all of those things from a bigger engineering perspective are all incredibly relevant. But if I was in a nuclear powerplant, for better or for worse, I think I didn’t retain a whole lot.

Joseph: The last thing I wanted to talk with you about, Tommy, is just some of the lessons that you’ve learned along the way of your quite radical career change. One of the things you mentioned to me before we started recording today is that making career changes can feel incredibly daunting but also life changing. I’d like to ask you about both parts of that statement one at a time. First, what did you find mot daunting about making the career change?

Tommy: The most daunting for me at the time, was really just… Your career, in a lot of ways, is a security blanket. It’s what provides income and stability. Saying that you’re moving on from that, whether you paved that career or not, is incredibly daunting. Just losing that, making that major life change is daunting. That was definitely the scariest thing for me. Moving beyond that, I mentioned we had this stage of bliss where you’re like “Okay, we’re free! We’re off the leash!” And then I would say years after that is when it really started to become a bit scarier on the financial side. In a prior career, when we you need a day-off, you can get a paid day-off. But when you run your own business, generally, the only thing moving the needle forward is you or your business partner. If you’re not working, that’s it. The clock stops. So, that’s the scary thing there from a financial perspective is you have to be working every single day, generally, to be able t continue pushing that forward—to be able to get back into that level of security where you know there’s enough of the business around you to keep paying the bills. I think that’s how things evolved from scary to exciting and then a blend of both. But mostly driven by the security that your career provides for you.

Joseph: How has your life changed since moving from working in a secure job at a powerplant to launching and now running your own drinks company?

Tommy: It’s definitely been an incredibly positive change. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t moments where there was “Okay, what are we going to do if we don’t close on this financing?” Or when we can’t pay for this or that. That’s always present and it’s kind of looming. Anyone who owns a business has that in the back of their mind. But beyond that, it’s been an incredibly positive change where I used to wake up and dread going to work. I would sit there and just scroll through the internet or whatever that might be. At this point, I wake up and I’m excited. I wish I had more time to work. That’s what we all dream about in a sense. Not just to want to work every single minute of every day but to love what you’re doing that much that you would actually even consider that. It’s been incredibly positive and my wife actually works with us here. To be able to work with her and be able to have that balance with the family as well has been incredibly positive.

Joseph: I did want to ask about that, Tommy. You mentioned that you’ve got a couple of very young boys. I think one is 6 months old. The other one is not even 3 yet. How do you balance the work with fatherhood and parenthood. I’ve got one young daughter and she’s coming up to four and I can barely balance anything going on around the house versus spending time with her and also running my own business. What have you learned about managing that balance yourself.

Tommy: It’s a lot. My wife and I joke about that it feels like every minute is scheduled to an extent but the first things to go are things that are for yourself like leisure. I have friends who are golfing and going on trips and outings and this and that. The first things to go for me are golf, watching sports, or whatever it might be, right? That’s something that I’m very much comfortable with. Loving what I do, building that and then spending time with my family. I love being a parent. I think as long as you kind of love what you do and love being a parent and you’re willing to invest into both, it’s great. It’s definitely tricky especially in the past year or two with COVID and all the challenges that it brought especially not being able to leave. There’s definitely those challenges but I think it comes down to being focused and being scheduled. Getting up early to get your work in or to get your half hour of just to sit and do whatever it is you might want to do like read a book. And just not having wasted time is really the biggest thing.

Joseph: I want to wrap up, Tommy, with what you’re doing right now there at Sound. Can you just tell me a little bit more about what’s next for you and what’s coming up on the horizon for you and Sound?

Tommy: For us, a lot of it now is just continuing to grow distribution. We spent a long time just iterating and evolving within the market. A few months ago, we launched a completely revamped brand and packaging and all that which has been huge for the brand and our sales velocity. So now, we’re starting to expand geographically, growing our team. We just hired a couple more people over the past month. The team is growing, the business is growing. We’re really just focused on expanding now that we feel like we have the positioning, the product and the right spot.

Joseph: That’s very exciting. If people want to learn more about you or Sound, where can they go?

Tommy: For Sound, it’s drinksound.com. You can find us on Instagram too @drink.sound. I’m personally on Instagaram, @tommy.kelly. You could also email me, anytime at [email protected]. I think those are probably the best two spots.

Joseph: Thank you so much, Tommy, for telling us about your unique journey towards founding your own company, the upside of making a bold career change, and also your life as an entrepreneur and father. Best of luck with that new distribution push and with growing the business. Thanks again for your time.

Tommy: Of course. Thank you so much for having me on to tell the story, Joseph.

Is it ever too late to explore your other career interests? Marketer turned voiceover artist, actor, model, and writer My Ly doesn’t think so. Her firm belief is that it never hurts to give something a shot, even if your background experience is unrelated or when you think your chances of “success” are slim.

In this episode of the Career Relaunch podcast, My shares her story of pursuing a few different side hustles during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and discusses what opportunities have emerged from these explorations. We talk about the trade-offs of full-time employment versus self-employment versus contract work along with the importance of maintaining a positive mindset when exploring new career possibilities.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, my challenge to you was to give something a shot. To give something a go that you’ve been thinking about trying out for so long. To focus less on whether you’ll be good at it or as good as others at it, or whether you’re going to be “successful,” but rather to focus on attempting it for the sake of exploration, learning, and most importantly to finally just seeing where it takes you. Maybe it goes nowhere. And that’s okay. But maybe it can be the start of something you never imagined would be possible for your career and life.

My Ly is a passionate, energetic, and creative individual who loves networking and helping others to inspire and grow. With over two decades of marketing experience in the beauty, construction, banking, and hospitality industries and a love for writing as she works on her debut novel, My has made the most of the lockdown period, during which she’s done work as an actor, voice over artist, model, and editor during the pandemic. She’s now doing what she can to inspire other people with creative interests to pursue their dreams.

During our chat, My referred to the Cutty Sark, where she’s the featured model on their homepage, the London Transport Museum where her voice is featured in one their exhibits, and View Magazine where she’ll be doing some editorial work. To learn more about My, follow her in Instagram or Clubhouse @my_petite_my.

If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

A2 Hosting is the web host provider I use and trust for my own websites, and they even offer 100% carbon neutral green hosting. For an easy, fast, and affordable way to get your personal website online today, visit careerrelaunch.net/a2 to get 50% off your web hosting plan.

Teaser (first ~15s): If its possible for someone to achieve something, why can’t that person be you? Unless you give things a try, you’ll never know if something is achievable or not.

Joseph: What are you up to right now? What have you been doing in the past few months? What’s been keeping you busy?

My: Back in September of last year, right at the beginning of the first UK lockdown, I ventured into some side hustles. I experimented with acting, voice-over work, and that’s been quite interesting because it’s not taken me to my current situation. I’m really sort of pursuing those particular creative outlets.

Joseph: You’re also working full time, right? Can you remind me of what you’re up to right now with your full time work? All these voice acting and modelling, you’re doing this on the side, right?

My: I work a full time job in marketing and I’ve been working in marketing for over 21 years now. I love what I do from a day-to-day perspective and I always have loved marketing. But I’ve also been a very creative person as well all throughout my life. With these side hustle experiments—or side hustles, shall I say—they are all fitted in and slotted around my day job. That can be quite challenging because my marketing day job is very busy and hectic. I’m juggling both then demanding day job, as well as then, evening to weekends and early mornings, fitting around all the other aspects that I’ve fallen in love with as well.

Joseph: We should probably go back in time a little bit. I know you’re working in marketing right now but you had a few detours along the way, from what I recall. I think the first time you and I crossed paths, in 2012 or 2013 when we served as judges in London for a marketing award event. You were working marketing sushi for Yo! Sushi and I was marketing ice cream for Häagen-Dazs. Can you tell me a little bit about your earlier career in marketing? After that we can talk about when you stepped away from it, returned to it, and how you fit in all these side gigs.

My: It was really early on, taking us back to my university days. I actually did an advertising and marketing degree. I really loved it and then fell into working into my first marketing job. I worked first in a lot different marketing sectors and industries. From the hairdressing industry, construction industry, banking industry, and hospitality industry—which has been a massive love of mine for over 8 years now. For me, it was quite important to think about different industries and also experience those industries because I think you don’t necessarily know what type of industry or company you might want to work for.

I’ve been working in hospitality for probably 8 years now, and it’s obviously my marketing day job. An opportunity came up for me to work in terms of my marketing consultancy side of things. It’s always something that I’ve wanted to do but never had an opportunity. So, when the opportunity came up, I really wanted to give that a go. I loved it. I had a couple of clients straight of the book and I really enjoyed working with those clients.

Joseph: Were you doing that alongside you full-time job or did you completely stepped away to do your own independent consultancy.

My: I had stepped away from my full-time job and then became self-employed and worked as a marketing consultant. I really enjoyed that. I think it’s a very different ball game when you came from working, for a long time, in permanent salaried jobs and then switch over to being self-employed, running your own business, running your own consultancy. I can definitely see different pros and cons being on both sides of the coin. I really did love going out, networking, getting my own clients and working with my clients as well. One of the reasons why I decided to come back into more of a contract role, initially, and then come back to a permanent, salaried member or staff, is because actually of my creative paths and routes. I was also wanting to work on my debut novel. I think what I quickly realized when I was working on my marketing consultancy is that working on your own business means you’re working on it pretty much 24/7. That’s really what led me to start thinking about how I’ll be able to carve out some time to do something a bit more creative and to start working on my novel again. How could I do that? What I wanted to do was to go back to a contract role, first of all, and then have the stability of getting back into a permanent job.

Joseph: Let’s go back a little bit here. There’s a couple of transitions that are quite interesting. You went from working full-time to being self-employed. What surprised you about working on your own? What were your plans and how did things actually pan out?

My: One of the biggest challenges about being self-employed, especially quite early on and quite new to it, I realized quite quickly that I missed the whole kind of having my own team, department, and being able to bounce off ideas with other people as well. That was quite a big shift and change. You’re obviously very reliant on yourself in either networking or pitching to get new work. A lot of the time, you’re potentially working by yourself unless you collaborate with other entrepreneurs. That was quite a big shift, having worked in a company with departments and your own teams where there was more than just one of you. Where as when you’re transitioning into becoming a marketing consultant it was a bit more challenging having other people to kind of bounce off ideas from.

Joseph: I can definitely relate to that. I think when you’re working on your own, it can feel very isolating and very solitary at times. This is even way before COVID, when everybody else seems to be in the office and you’re kind of on your own doing your own thing. It can become very lonely at times. At the same time, it does offer you some freedoms and the flexibility and autonomy to do whatever you want, whenever you want, work with whichever clients you feel would be best for you. What was it like to then go from that world of working independently and then back into a more traditional contract or full-time job in marketing? It’s always been something that I felt could have ended up being the path for me. It’s not what I ended up doing but I’ve always been curious about what it’s like to go from being self-employed and back into the full-time world.

My: Timing is everything, Joseph. I think sometimes things obviously happen for a specific reason within your career and lifespan. I think for me, personally, it was probably the right time to come back into, not quite a permanent job, but into a contractor role. I’m the type of person that really enjoys variety in my life so I think the contractor world suited me because it was still quite similar to running your own marketing consultancy. As a consultant, you are working with different clients. For me, it was quite a nice transition because it almost seemed like the next natural step was to get into a contractor role which meant I could work for different companies and view it almost like a marketing consultancy lens before I again transition back into a permanent job for a company.

Joseph: You go back into a contractor role. Speaking of variety, let’s dive into this topic. When you an I reconnected, it was earlier this year, you mentioned that you accidentally got into creative side hustles such as modelling and acting. How in the world did that come up for you?

My: The first that came to me was really the modelling side of things. During the first lockdown, as most people were, probably, slightly stirred crazy of being in lockdown, I ended up spotting a Facebook post in my local community. During the first global pandemic and the first lockdown, I joined a couple of local groups just to keep a eye on the fact of which supermarkets didn’t have any toilet roll or didn’t have any pastor or eggs. And then a lady put up a post and she ended up being the marketing manager for the Cutty Sark Museum based in Greenwich. It was a famous museum, a popular tourist attraction. They wanted to invite local people to come along and be part of their reopening marketing campaign or advertising campaign. I applied for it. I invited some of my friends to apply for it and it was just something to do. It was just something that I thought, “It would be quite nice to get selected because it means I wouldn’t have to be wearing jogging bottoms or track bottoms for one day or for a couple of hours.” It was a really exciting thing to do. So, I just went on and applied for that. I ended up getting selected for that particular modelling shoot. They ended up using me as their lead models. I was on their website. I was on their social media posts. I was on bus sides and outdoor posters as well.

Joseph: How did you get your headshots done? Did you hire somebody to do that? Did you do it on your own? Did you have some that were ready to go?

My: I literally applied with a couple of headshots that I had in the past and they just selected people purely off the photographs that you email to them.

Joseph: Had you thought about doing modelling in the past? Had it ever cross your mind or was this just something that you did completely on a whim?

My: I completely did this on a whim but I have done modelling shoots previously before. The other side of me is for over 15 years, I’ve actually been an extra, fitting it around my day job when I can. I’ve worked on films like Harry Potter, for example, or Twenty-Four, or the Kingsman. I’ve been in shoots with Samuel L. Jackson on the Kingsman. For me, it’s been a really interesting creative outlet that I could do which was completely different from my day job. I’ve been doing that for such a long time. Through my extras agency, I would also get a couple or a few modelling jobs but they’ve been quite a while in the past so I’ve never really thought about being a model at all. And, Joseph, obviously, you’ve met me, so you know how short I am. I’m only 5-foot. The stereotypical viewpoint of models, as you know, very tall, very slim. So, I’ve never taken modelling very seriously. I’ve done a few jobs in the past through my extras agency and then this job came up for the Cutty Sark Museum advertising campaign. I got selected for it and I really enjoyed it but it wasn’t really until when the photographs came back and they were part of the advertising campaign for the Cutty Sark that the modelling side of things really started. I probably owe a lot of the credit to my waxing lady, Linda. She was the person who said to me, “My, have you thought about modelling before?” And it was only at that point when she said that to me, that I thought, “You know what? I haven’t really thought about it seriously before. These photographs have come out pretty well. Why don’t I give it a go? Why don’t I create a website?” I had some different headshots. I had some photographs previously before. I built myself a really basic website and that’s how I kind of started. I started joining some casting websites and started applying for different modelling jobs. Since then, I’ve been doing various different modelling shoots. I’ve been put forward for some quite big names jobs. I was put forward for a virtual advertising campaign for Harvey Nichols. I’ve done modelling shoots—my first fitness modelling shoot for My Zone, a fitness brand. There’s been other various, both paid for and also non-paid, shoots. I really loved it. I loved being part of an industry that is known for potentially [ ] and how you look. I think it’s more about the relationships and the connections that modelling projects can actually offer you. So, I absolutely love working with photographers or make-up artists or hair stylists. It’s just a really lovely way of connecting with other creative people.

Joseph: That sounds like a lot of fun and its good for you for putting yourself out there and making all that happiness. It just sounds like its kind of been rolling along for you, since that initial gig. That’s super exiting. I’ve always wondered what would it be like to be a model. I’m not model-material by any means but it’s this world that you see on TV and of course everybody’s seen models in magazines and so, are there any misconceptions that you had about the modelling industry that you feel has been debunked for you?

My: I think I’ve realized now, having come into the modelling industry, is that there are all different types of models. Previously before, I probably even didn’t think about modelling at all—which I didn’t—because I thought it would potentially require a certain look or a certain type of person that could fit inside that modelling world. Since I’ve come into the modelling industry world I then realized that you can get all different types of models and there’s so many types of modelling jobs as well. So, anybody could be a model and become a model because there are jobs to suit all different people in terms of what height they are, how they look, what different categories or sectors or whether that’s a fitness model, commercial model, lifestyle model, or fashion model. The most important part is understanding now that most people can be a model if you wanted to. I’m also someone who is not a spring chicken. I’m in my early 40s now, so part of the modelling industry and the acting industry, what I’ve come to realize is the fact that anything is possible at any age. It doesn’t necessarily mean that just because you’re not 20 years old or 30 years old, don’t discount the fact that you could become a model or an actor even at an older age. I think that’s one of the most important things that I’ve really learned across these past seven months and also something that I’m really passionate about in terms of encouraging and inspiring other people if they are itnereted in becoming a model or an actor but they lack the confidence because they think they’re too old to do it in those industries. Or that they haven’t dabbled with it before. They kind of thought about it and it’s something they kind of wanted to do but they’ve not known the right course to get on to. Or they haven’t thought about it because their normal lives’ taken over and its not something that they’ve really considered. I’m actually now really championing and encouraging others that if they are interested in those industries, they should give it a go and see what happens.

Joseph: That’s a great lesson My. A lot of people, including me, assume that our careers are pretty much set at that point and there’s no room either for a side hustle or a new career or there’s just no opportunity or possibility for it to be a reality. It’s a good reminder that it’s not too late. Speaking of being able to get into anything, before we talk about some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way, we’ve got to talk about acting a little bit here. How did acting start to creep in to your career on top of your contractor role and on top of the modelling you were doing on the side?

My: Like the modelling side of things, the acting side of things I’ve completely fallen into by accident during the first lockdown. I had wanted to try and carve out more time to work on my debut novel. The main character in my debut model is an actress. I wanted to try and understand what actors do. What do they think? What do they feel? What is acting? What does it mean? Obviously, from my point of view, I’ve never done an acting course. I’ve never been an actor. I knew a couple of friends at that point who were actors but I didn’t really know or understand what actors do. So, I thought the best thing would be to book myself onto a 3-month beginners’ course in London. Usually, the court would be face-to-face, in person, but because of COVID-19, it had to run as an online course. It was only after doing that first acting course of 3 months that I completely fell in love with acting. And again, by complete accident, I find myself carving out another creative career and I’m excited what’s going to happen next with it.

Joseph: I think you’re dabbling with these areas and just seeing where it takes you and that’s a really interesting way of having these new opportunities emerge for you.

My: I don’t think I would have ever guessed that I would’ve gotten into modelling or acting. If someone would’ve asked me a year ago or seven months ago, “Would you get into acting or modelling?” At that time, I would’ve gone, “No! Of course not. I’ve never even thought about doing it.” It is really interesting of when you think about doing something but maybe not put that extra pressure on yourself in terms of it is the only thing that you can see yourself doing and piling on that huge amount of pressure is what sometimes actors might do. If you’re able to think about certain careers or jobs where you want to give it ago and give it your best and your all into it, but it might not necessarily be the be-all-end-all. If you’re kind of just exploring it and you’re seeing it more of an experiment to kind of see how far you can get into it, I think it just helps to alleviate that extra pressure that you can put on yourself. And also, alleviating those expectations of success.

Joseph: I’m definitely guilty of this. I get really attached to the potential outcomes and achieving those outcomes and that makes the whole endeavour very daunting and I don’t even end up doing it. It’s a good reminder to detach yourself from it a little bit. This is a really good foray into the last thing I was hoping to talk to you about, My. Before we wrap up with what you’ve got going on at this moment, because I know you’ve got a couple of interesting opportunities that have popped up for you. You’ve mentioned the lockdown a few times. I’d like to talk about some of the things you’ve learned along the way of your career journey and I often hear from people who want to change careers that they want to wait for the right moment before they make their move. We’re recording this in mid-2021 and it sounds like these modelling and acting gigs came up for you during the past year in the middle of the pandemic, at the exact time when a lot of people would say it’s not a good time to do something new. What would you say to somebody who’s maybe holding off on pursuing a new path in their career because they feel like now isn’t a quite the right time to make a bold move—either because of the pandemic or because of any other reason in their life.

My: Obviously, every person is different and it depends on the life stage and also the personal circumstance. I was really keen, right at the beginning of the lockdown, to not be consumed or worried unnecessarily about the whole doom and gloom of COVID-19 and making sure that I would keep myself really busy so that I didn’t really have time to be worrying about everything that is to do with COVID-19. Having a really positive frame of mind and maybe reframing things is actually a really big part of what I’ve learn so far across these past seven months when I first started pursuing both of these two creative outlets. Reframing your mind is something that can be done by anybody and can be relevant to how people might be thinking if they feel that, “this is maybe the wrong time for me to do it” or “this isn’t something that I’m going to be good enough to do at this particular age.” But if you reframe that to think about the fact that why don’t you just give it a go? See what happens. That’s the kind of attitude I’ve taken on board. I’ll give things a go. Things might not necessarily work out the way that you think it’s going to work out. It might not necessarily take you to the career path that you’re expecting but I think if you can reframe your mind to just give things a little try, even during this period of lockdown where things are very uncertain and things can be quite difficult, I don’t think that you will necessarily lose anything but you might just gain several things. That’s the kind of attitude that I’ve taken on board. I think that’s the other thing about not thinking about if this is the right time. There’s also that fear factor that can creep in and hold you back from doing something. The things that I’ve really learned to across the past seven months is that you have be brave. You have to reframe your mind. Give it a go and just see what happens. And if nothing else, you might just pick up a new skill. You might just make a contact and network with a new person, a new friend. You might create a new friend. I guess it’s just having that positive mindset to be willing to give things a go and be willing to be brave and see how that next step might take you to a different place or to a new opportunity.

Joseph: Speaking of opportunities, what’s something that you’ve learned about yourself over the past year as it relates to opening up to new opportunities in your career.

My: Anything is possible. I know that sounds really, a little bit, too positive or maybe too unrealistic but if it’s possible for someone to achieve something, why can’t that person be you. Unless you give things a try, you’ll never know if something is achievable or not. What I’ve tried to do across the past seven months is not limit my beliefs to, “I can’t do this.” But instead, reframing my mind and so I could give it a go and see what happens. I’ve never wanted or thought of becoming a model before and I’ve never thought of becoming an actor before. Seven months forward, I find myself doing exactly those two things.

Joseph: The other question I have for you, My, is I’m hearing is the practicality of having so many things going on because this sounds like a lot. Modelling, acting, taking classes, your full-time job. How do you fit all that in and how do you manage that?

My: I think it’s all about prioritizing certain elements. At the moment, for example, I’m having to take a little more of a back seat on the modelling side of things because the acing side of things is coming a bit more to the forefront and I’m focusing on that a little bit more. I think it’s about trying to work through in your given week, what you can realistically achieve. There are little things that I try and do. For example, for the acting side of things, I try and apply for some castings so just some jobs maybe 10 or 15 minutes per day. I’m not spending hours and hours on trying to apply for jobs but I might carve out 10 or 15 minutes everyday in the evening or in the morning before I do my day job, I’ll couple batch of applications out of the way and I think it’s just trying to work through what you might need to do on a day-to-day basis in order to be able and try to progress those two avenues that I’ve now decided to pursue. These are small little steps which hopefully, over time, whether that’s across the next couple of months or the next year, will then turn into fruition and into certain projects of certain shoots, etc. that I will be able to add to my CV and add to my skill set.

Joseph: I want to wrap up with what your doing right now, My. Speaking of hardwork and things coming into fruition, I know you’ve got some irons in the fire here with some exciting opportunities. Can you just tell me a little bit about these potential gigs that you’re in the running for?

My: I’ve got two projects which are definite. I’ve been chosen as an understudy for a short theatre play which is based on a true story about domestic violence and it will be predominantly played by an Asian cast. There are no set dates yet for that short theatre play but we’re hoping that its going to be at the end of this year or next year. It depends on how the world of theatre is going to open up again after lockdown. It’s an interesting role because that will be my first understudy job and it’s another chance for me to learn in terms of an understudy role. I’m really excited about that. I’ve got a second project, which will happen in the summer. I’ve done my two voice over jobs and this second voice over job is for an upcoming exhibition installation at the London Transport Museum. My voice is going to be used for an exhibition in the summer. So, that’s will be a really exciting to be able to go to the London Transport Museum and hear me talking to me. That will be really exciting. During lockdown, I’ve also got myself an editorial role for a luxury lifestyle magazine called “View Magazine”. I’m going to be focused on writing upcoming articles and reviews that are focused around the acting, film and literature world. I’m just sort of getting to grips about what my first few articles might be. So, that’s really brilliant but I suppose the projects at the moment from the acting side of things, which I’ve recently put forward for is something that I can’t disclose details, but I’ve been put forward for a regular role in a big TV soap. I’ve been selected for the first stage. There’s a self-tape audition which I’ve just done and completed. I’m just now waiting to see whether I make it through to the second stage but even if I don’t get any further, it’s a massive achievement to just get to first stage. I’m just really excited and pleased to even be put forward for this particular role. That could be a very exciting prospect, if that pulls through. If it doesn’t, I will definitely be a lovely achievement to add to all the other unexpected achievements that I’ve managed to do across the past seven months.

Joseph: Congratulations, My. That sounds super exciting.

Do you ever wonder if it’s too late for you to start your second career? You should never say never. But only you can create the change you seek. No one will do it for you or hand it to you on a silver platter.

Having spent 20 fruitful and fulfilling years in the business world, including operating her own successful digital marketing company, Pam Katz is now happily immersed in her second career, nursing. I decided to have Pam on the show because, first of all, given the current pandemic, we’re long overdue for having a nurse on the show. And also, because she’s going to share some useful insights on what it takes to completely shift directions in your career, even if that journey’s a little more challenging than you expected.

During the Mental Fuel® segment, I’ll address a listener question about what to do next after you’ve been let go of a job you didn’t like very much in the first place.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I addressed a listener question about how to figure out what to do with your life. My challenge to you if you’re unsure of what to do as you look ahead in your career is to step away from trying to figure it all out on your own and proactively reach out to someone in your network to talk things through. The skies may not part immediately, and you may not have any sort of epiphany after the first few conversations, but there is a real power in live discussions that may help you uncover a few helpful themes that help you narrow down the overwhelming number of options out there. You never know what ideas may come up that you never considered before.

00:00:00 Overview

Pam Katz spent 20 years in the business world, including operating her own digital marketing company. Around the age of 40, she went through a mid-life “re-evaluation”. Even though she had a successful business and was good at what she did, she didn’t feel fulfilled by what she did each day. She decided something had to change, and eventually went back to school to get her master’s in nursing.

She’s now happily immersed in her second career at the Rush University Medical Center as a hematology/oncology Registered Nurse. She also volunteers her time to help vaccinate people against COVID-19 in the more vulnerable areas of her city. Taking care of others is in her blood and she’s now in a role that helps others, gives back and serves the greater good.

If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered in future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

Thanks to Namecheap for supporting this episode of the Career Relaunch® podcast. Namecheap is an affordable, trustworthy domain registrar that offers free privacy protection with every domain registration. Claim your unique website domain today to start building your brand by visiting CAREERRELAUNCH.NET/NAMECHEAP.

Teaser (first ~15s): I myself was the only one who was going to be able to make that change for myself. I think everybody has to take that step back and evaluate who they are, what they are destined to be, what calls them, what fulfils them, and it’s going to be different for everybody.

Joseph: Hello, Pam. Welcome to Career Relaunch! It is great to have you on the show.

Pam: Why thank you so much! It’s good to talk to you again.

Joseph: I know you’re quite busy right now, so I appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. I just want to dive right in. First of all, I want to get a sense of what you have been focused on in your career and your life before we dive into your career history and some of the transitions you’ve been through.

Pam: I’ve been at Rush University Medical Center for three and a half years now. I work in the Haematology Oncology unit. We handle all the blood cancer patients and all the stem cell transplant patients. Right now, I’m very focused on getting my oncology certified nursing certification which is a higher-level certification within the oncology area. I’m looking to see what might be next in the nursing area for me whether it’s taking up a notch of what I’m doing or going to outpatient. The great thing I’ve found about nursing is that there are so many opportunities and so many different things you can do with that education and background. The opportunities are endless.

Joseph: I know you’ve spent a few years and it hasn’t been a tremendous amount of time—coming up on 4 years working in nursing. I’ve got to ask you, what impact, if any, has COVID had on your day-to-day work as a nurse in a haematology and oncology unit?

Pam: Believe it or not, it’s had an impact in many ways for us. The number of patients we’ve had on the unit somewhat dipped during the height of COVID because I think many people were putting off care. The nurses in our unit often end up floating to those units that were accepting COVID patients. You also feel like you’re a part of a bigger mission to attack this pandemic, to help the people, and try to figure out what therapies would work the best. In the course of last year, as the pandemic ebbed and flowed, people can only stall their care for so long. Our census came back up and pretty much stayed up since. But education and communication with our patient population is specifically impacted because most of them have very compromised immune systems and are far more susceptible to catching things like COVID. The impact on them, if they were to get it, would be far more devastating. We had to learn an awful lot in terms of medication strategies above and beyond what we would normally counsel our patients on.

Joseph: It probably goes without saying, on behalf of everybody out there listening including me, we definitely appreciate what you and all the other nurses and doctors and healthcare staff are doing out there during these really challenging times. I know you haven’t really been a haematology nurse, Pam. I do want to come back and talk about your day-to-day life as a nurse, but I was wondering if we could go back in time. This is a show about career change. I was wondering if we could go way back in history, and we could talk about what you were doing before nursing. Tell me about your time working in marketing and then we could move forward from there.

Pam: When I got out of college—truthfully even going into college—I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do. You’ve got your Venn diagram of what you’re good at and what you like to do, and you have these intersections that can encompass many things. I think I initially went into marketing and advertising because my eldest sister did, and it seemed like an interesting thing to do. I got into marketing. I was working at ad agencies early on, for a good chunk of my career. Then I moved into digital marketing in the late 90’s when things were just starting out. I proceeded to specialize in that field for the rest of my career. I worked at United Airlines. Then, I worked at FTD. I had a number of different agencies and client-side marketing roles. But in the end, I ended up starting my own digital marketing company. It was called Charlotte’s Web Marketing. I did that for about 8 years. It was great. It was very fulfilling at the time. I ran a successful company. I had employees. Marketing’s an interesting beast. I would never want to disparage that occupation overall but for me, it felt like I was trying to sell people things that they didn’t necessarily need.

Joseph: You mentioned United Airlines. What were some of the other things you were selling that you kind of felt like, “I’m not really finding this super fulfilling or gratifying.

Pam: One of my major clients when I was working at the ad agency was a major movie studio. There’s nothing wrong with marketing movie studios to people and marketing the pictures that are coming out. A lot of them are packaged-goods companies, financial services, and credit cards. There’s a means to an end for all of it. I mean that’s how people find out about products, but it didn’t do anything for me. It just felt like I was pushing annoying advertising at people. Even as a consumer today, if I have videos or things that I’m looking at online and I get interrupted by advertising, I’m like, “Cut it out!” It felt very intrusive. Unfortunately, in the marketing arena, it’s all very subjective. You’re at the whims of your clients. A lot of them would just not take your counsel on what is the best way to integrate into a consumer’s media consumption versus just blasting them as hard and fast as you can.

Joseph: It sounds like you had a bit of disenchantment about the work itself because you’re marketing products that you aren’t super excited to market to people. You’re feeling like, should I even be trying—to use your words—to push these products on to people. It also sounds like there is an element of you not completely having control over the output of that marketing in which like it seems you were bit at the mercy of your clients. At what point did you go from maybe being frustrated with these things to realizing that, “Hey, I’m not fulfilled.” How did you know that?

Pam: It was a couple of things. One of which was the uncertainty that it all brought. One of my biggest clients was going through bankruptcy. I didn’t know the longevity of what that client relationship was going to look like. Were they even going to be in business? How is that going to impact my bottom line? I think the lack of control and the lack of certainty over my destiny is scary. It’s scary when you’re running your own business and finding out that you may not have perpetual income for the next year. It wouldn’t go unnoticed by most people who know me. I have a decently high-risk tolerance, but I also have to have a certain amount of control and certain gain. It was that combined with not feeling fulfilled by this. So, I sold off the remaining business I had after that big client was having its challenges and I “went to work for them.” But they were based in San Diego and remote working was just not ideal. I would travel a lot there regularly and meet these clients. I’d run up again this same damn thing. It was almost like Groundhog Day because you had little control over what they were doing, and how they were doing it. They would make just what seemed to be very subjective, not logical decision about how to manage their business, let alone the marketing. I think my head was ready to explode at that point.

Joseph: Was that the tipping point? When you realized that something had to change? Can you take me back to that moment when you said, “Okay, I’m doing something else?”

Pam: I was coming back from a business trip. I was on a plane, and I was messaging with my husband. I was kind of expressing my frustration because of how…you know, how things simmer from a long time and then you slowly turn up the heat and it starts to boil over on you. Then I said, “I don’t know if I can do this any longer. This is not me.” As we kind of talked it out and tried to work through if it was marketing, if it was this particular agency? What is this? At the end of the day what it said for me was I need to be doing something that’s important to me—that I’m feeling like I’m giving back. I’m contributing to society. My motto today is definitely: “Never say never. You can always make a change.” It’s so true. I started doing a lot of information gathering. At the end of the day, it entails more schooling, and leaving making a pay check. I always thought, maybe people thought I was a bit partially insane for doing that but not truly. It was just definitely scary.

Joseph: How did you come up with the idea of getting into nursing?

Pam: I’ve done a lot of volunteer work over the years. One is I volunteered with a home hospice. It was just the most awesome thing on the planet. What I discovered through all this is connecting with people and listening to people—not hearing them—and really caring for them at this crucial moment in their life was something that kind of drew me in. It was really an enlightening moment for me. When the hospice program got sold, I ended up going to the Lurie Children’s Hospital. I would visit quite a few of these paediatric ICU patients. I’d play games with them, distract them—just kind of help them through their stay from a non-medical standpoint. Volunteering obviously will not make you money and it felt like I wasn’t doing as much as I was capable of. I really wanted to challenge myself. With all of these volunteer roles that I was doing, it really started pointing me into that direction based on those experiences. Sometimes the universe talks to you in direct and indirect ways. It felt like it was pushing me along like a wave pushes to the ocean. I ended up talking to a lot of people in the medical field. I just started really digging into with this and thought, “Would this be something I would like to do?” I ended up taking a medical terminology class at the community college here just to see if I was in the right track. I really liked it. I proceeded to continue to take more of the pre-requisites that one would need. I opted for a master’s program in nursing because I already had a bachelor’s degree. I felt like that was a more calculated good move on my part.

Joseph: And are you just doing this in the evenings and weekends or is this a full-time program?

Pam: That was a full-time program which obviously made it more challenging because we had one source of income and two small children. They were four at the time when I started this process. They’re going to be twelve next month. Time flies. But you know what, they were going to be 12 years old and I was going to be 48 years old regardless of what I chose to do, so why not take that chance to be happier?

Joseph: What was running through your head as you progressed through that program, which I’m assuming involved you being one of the older students in the program? What was the experience of going back to school like for you?

Pam: You start to question yourself. Am I capable of this? Can I still learn? Because there’s that old adage that goes, “You can teach an old dog new tricks.” I don’t think that’s actually true. I just think that you learn in a different way. I would say a majority of women—there were a half a dozen men in the program in their 20s but there were actually a couple of women that were older than me. So many of them and I don’t know if this was an age thing or not, were very competitive. It somewhat felt like this cut-throat environment but that wasn’t me. The real nut of it that was just super fascinating for me was that when I was in college the first time around, it was so different. This time around, I was very focused. I knew what I wanted, and the learning was not something I had to do. It was something I wanted to do. It was going to be super important as I moved on and actually took on a job being a nurse. It’s almost like you’re sucking it in like a sponge versus feeling like you had to do things because you know that those are going to be important things that you are going to need and keep in your head when you start working in that occupation. This is a little more fluff, I’ll call it. In terms of marketing, it’s very subjective. There’s not as much concrete like it “should be done this way” or “this is best practice.” I think that’s the way my brain works. It’s a little more…not with all these gray areas everywhere but more evidence-based versus more fluid.

Joseph: I would like to shift gears a little bit, Pam, and just talk about your time as a nurse. You graduate from your program. You enter your first nursing role. What was that like for you to go from marketing products to now being in a clinical setting, and taking care of patients. Can you put into words what that contrast was like for you?

Pam: Oh my god, it was so different. I was used to being the boss. I was used to knowing my craft inside and out. People would look to me as the expert after 20+ years. It was a little scary. It was a little daunting. I didn’t know everything. I think part of why they wanted me is because of the life experience, the stability, or I don’t know. I discovered that I could lean on the things that I knew in terms of collaboration and relationships, but I really had to focus in on learning the tests, the skills, and not feeling overwhelmed. For the first 6 months to a year, it was like, “oh my God, can I do this?” I would look at these other nurses in the unit—some were older, some were younger than me—they were able to easily do the things that needed to get done but also do the education, the emotional support, and all these other things. I was like, “oh my god, am I ever going to get to that point?” And I did. But at the beginning, it felt like I was drowning a little because I didn’t have the same handle on work than I did before I left my old world.

Joseph: At the same time, did you feel like this was the right choice for you? If so, how did you know that?

Pam: I couldn’t say for 6 months, and I knew that it was the case. It was not that I didn’t feel right but it was more of if I could actually do it. It’s such a steep learning curve for anyone. Let alone, for someone who had been doing something else for so long but you start to find your hands. You start to be able to build that agility and depth from a task perspective. You start to speed up how you’re able to do things. Things don’t take nearly long as they used to. You learn more about the diseases that these patients have on your unit. You spend enough time with the other nurses and the doctors, and you listen, pay attention and observe. All of a sudden, you feel like the stone that gathers moss. You almost feel like it’s starting to build up and build up and you hit a point where you feel comfortable. More of that sort of snowballed for me. That really cuts it in. Not only do I enjoy doing what I’m doing but I can do it and I’m good at it. I think this is one of my strengths. I know how to communicate with people. I know how to build rapport and trust. Add that and the medical knowledge and the skills, it kind of makes for a good package if you will.

Joseph: I think we’ve all crossed paths with nurses at some point in our lives. I certainly have. Do you feel like there are misconceptions that either patients have consistently about nurses or even misconception you held about being a nurse that have been dispelled for you?

Pam: I think a lot of people think of nurses as people who are taking your vital signs and cleaning up after you—for instance, if someone was incontinent—the very basic things. They don’t realize the extent to which we go to school and have to know so much about what’s going on. The focus is so much on the providers, and the doctors but at the end of the day, they don’t know it all. We’re the ones advocating for them and eventually they’d recognize that. They’ll be like, “Now I know who I need to get to where I need to be.” Don’t get me wrong, the doctors are very valuable. They know their stuff. They’ve gone to school far longer. I get that—especially when they’re not an internist and they’re within the doctor’s ideal in particular. They’re very specialized. They really know their stuff. I absolutely respect and value everything they bring to the table. But I think the patients expect that, but they don’t necessarily expect that the person who’s really going to be holding their hand through the process is their nurse.

Joseph: Before we talk about some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way. I do have to ask you about your experience as a nurse, especially at this particular moment in time. We touched on this earlier but we’re recording this in spring of 2021, and I was reading a study by Incredible Health, which is a hiring platform for nurses. In one of their recent surveys, they conducted on the impact of COVID on over 60,000 nurses. They found that 80% of chief nursing officers reported an increase in permanent nurse turnover during the pandemic. One-third of nurses have experienced financial hardship in the past year. How was your experience as a nurse during the pandemic and how are you coping with that?

Pam: I’ve actually read similar stories. The thing that is not surprising is the mass exodus out of the healthcare field and out of nursing. People felt so burned out and overwhelmed by it. I could appreciate that because you have enough people dying on you. You have people you can’t tell because you didn’t know enough or you didn’t have the capacity. We are very fortunate at my hospital. We never turned people away. Our facility was built for a pandemic. It was really built to handle something like that. We were able to turn over so many different units. This facility was really turned into—I’ll say—a war zone facility. Not only were we getting our normal patient population but smaller hospitals or hospitals that weren’t capable of handling these patients were transferring them to us. It wasn’t overwhelming because we were staffed for that. But I’m sure I could see why they would’ve been burned out. They were like, “I didn’t sign up for this.”

Joseph: Did you feel like, “Gosh, this was my idea of what nursing is going to be for me and now, this is what it is.” Did you ever have any similar sort of feelings like “Hey, I didn’t sign up for this.”

Pam: I didn’t, and I’ll tell you why. I felt like: “No, I didn’t sign on to be in a pandemic but nobody in this world did.” I feel like it was our job as healthcare providers to help people, regardless of the situation. It was almost empowering in a weird way, for me. I could see how people felt overwhelmed and burned out, but I was also new to this. When the pandemic really hit, I was two and a half years in. I was still kind of feeling that adrenaline of newness and really loving what I was doing. I wanted to know how I can help and how I can be part of this. My perspective was probably a lot different. I guess some people come to nursing as a job, some people come to it as a calling. Based on the timing and the revelation of what I should be doing in my life, I’m sure there are other places where I could be working for more money right now, but I really love what I do. I love my facility because they’re very focused on health equity—not equality but equity. They’re focused on really raising up populations and helping populations that needed them the most. We’re on the west side of Chicago which is a less advantaged area, and we do so much as an institution to help people over there. There’s a lot of things related to gratitude and really wanting to do for others that drives me. At so many levels, I walk out of work most days saying: “That was really cool. I was able to make a difference in that person’s life.”

Joseph: The last thing I want to talk about before we wrap up here is just the lessons you’ve learned along your career change journey. One of the things you mentioned to me when we first connected is that you and only you can make the change that you seek. No one else if going to do that for you or hand it to you on a silver platter. What did you mean by that?

Pam: It would’ve been super easy for me to keep doing marketing. It was profitable. I could do it. I knew it well. From my perspective, the gutsiest move was to pick up and totally change because it was completely jarring to my confidence, and resiliency. But at the end of the day nobody was going to say, “Pam, you shouldn’t do this. Here’s what you should do. Here’s the plan. Here’s the blueprint.” I, myself, was the only one who is going to be able to make that change for myself. I think everybody has to take that step back and evaluate who they are, what they are destined to be, what calls them, and what fulfills them. And for everybody, that’s going to be different. I know quite a few career changers in my life and most of them would probably tell you that was best move they could’ve ever made, and they thank God they took the risk and persevered through the uncertainty to get to that place. I have definitely discovered that having more experience does not necessarily make you a better person or make you a better whatever—in my case, a nurse. Even the new guy can have the better idea in anything you’re doing in life. Specifically in the medical setting, it’s how you carry yourself. It’s how you communicate with people. It’s how you build those relationships. Should I have made the change sooner? I don’t know. But I am super glad I did. The other thing that’s interesting is that from an outsider’s point of view or even for me at the outset of this, you always think that the doctors are the experts at everything, but the reality is, that’s not necessarily the case. A different set of eyes and a different set of perspective on anything is a good thing. Just because you’re not the doctor doesn’t mean you can’t have the greatest impact.

Joseph: For those people out there who are thinking about switching careers into nursing or making any change in their career, what’s something you wish you had known about career change that you now know having been through this transition?

Pam: Do your leg work. When you start to figure out the different areas that you’re interested in, talk to people, and shadow people. You may not know what the next best thing is for you. So, you take that journey. Just because that first step you take doesn’t work out or doesn’t end up being the thing that you really want to do, it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to get there. It is a journey, and it is not a sprint. It’s definitely a marathon in so many ways. You’re not necessarily get to be happy overnight. You won’t get there on your first foray into something new. A lot of leg work upfront will get you to where you want to be faster and in the best place versus rushing into things. If I had rushed into non-profit marketing, I would never be where I am today. I went in thinking, I’m this older student like you were asking me about earlier. I was asking myself, “Can I really do this?” You know, these other girls are going to run circles around me. No, that was not the case. You feel like you’re good at what you do. You feel like you’re smart but sometimes you can even surprise yourself. Remembering that you’re not always the underdog and you may just be the next best thing to what you’re going to be doing next. Take the time to evaluate and know who you are—to know what you want to do next. You’ve got to be true to yourself.

Joseph: Thank you so much for sharing that advice and for also telling us more about your transition into nursing, your experience as a nurse especially during this pandemic, and also some of the lessons you learned along the way. I also just want to thank you again for all the important work you’re doing as a nurse—to take care of others during these really challenging times. Best of luck with those certifications and please stay safe.

Pam: I will. Thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure.

What happens when the career you originally pursued is no longer working for you? In this episode of Career Relaunch, Youssef Salameh, shares his story of relaunching his career from running a family restaurant in NYC to becoming a realtor in Las Vegas. We’ll talk about the emotions of walking away from your career, the barriers that stop you from moving on, and the realities of leaping into a new industry.

I decided to have Youssef on the show because his story is one that you might be relate to. Sometimes, we invest a lot into one path in our career, and even when we know we’re not completely happy, we keep hanging on. But as Youssef is going to describe, sometimes, when the writing’s on the wall, you just have to change course.

During the Mental Fuel® segment, I also address a listener question about whether your next career move should be one that’s practical or aspirational.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I talked about the importance of getting very clear with yourself on what specific metrics you’ll use and hurdles you’ll need to cross that will trigger you to pursue something else in your career and define where you’ll draw that line.

Will it be a certain number of days each week you truly enjoy your job vs. dread your job? Or accumulating a certain amount of savings so you can feel comfortable weathering a temporary hit to your income?

Or will it be something more personal? For example, the number of days each week you can actually tuck your kids in at night? Or the amount of time you feel energized vs. depleted?

Decide what’s important for you to have, and if you cross that line from your situation being acceptable to unacceptable, make your bold move, knowing that your transition may be an emotional one as Youssef described earlier, but certainly one worth making.

Youssef Salameh was born and raised in New York City. He and his mother, originally from Lebanon, built a successful restaurant brand there named Wafa’s. And for 11 years, the restaurant did really well, featured at the top of most major publications’ food lists. But eventually, they had to close down their restaurant, and in early 2020, Youssef, his wife, and daughters moved across the US to Las Vegas to launch Wafa’s there. But then, the pandemic hit, and Youssef dropped his plans to open a restaurant there and decided to instead pursue a completely different interest of his–real estate.

If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

Built by linguists and language lovers, Grammarly’s writing app finds and corrects hundreds of complex writing errors — so you don’t have to. Career Relaunch listeners can download Grammarly for free by going to GetGrammarly.com/relaunch.

Teaser (first ~15s): I truly didn’t want to let go of it. It was all I know. We decided to sell it and just move on with our lives. It was probably the scariest moment of my life. It was more than a financial loss. It was a personal loss for me.

Joseph: Youssef, thank you for joining me on Career Relaunch. It is great to have you on the show!

Youssef: Thank you, Joseph. It’s great to be here.

Joseph: Alright, so we have a lot to cover today. We’re going to cover your time working on the restaurant industry and then what you’re up to right now as a realtor. Could you just start us off by telling me a little bit about what you’ve been focused on in your career and your life?

Youssef: Well, as of late, I’ve just been focused on the real estate industry as a whole and getting to know the ins and out of it. For me, the real estate industry is a people business. It’s a business that I’ve always been in whether it was cooking for people and now, finding people homes. I’m extremely grateful that I have time to spend with my wife and daughters now which I didn’t have much of before.

Joseph: How may daughters do you have and how have things been going for them with everything going on with the pandemic?

Youssef: I have 2 girls. One is going to be six next week, and one is going to be 10 in August. It’s been tough on them. They take it well on the surface but as a parent, I feel like it’s my job to notice the little things that are not the same anymore. I mean, don’t forget, they’re not really socializing. They might have maybe 2 or 3 friends on the neighbourhood over here that they get together with, but overall, I feel like children really need to be in a setting with multiple children on a daily basis.

Joseph: Yeah, for sure. I think when we spoke before I mentioned I’ve also got a young daughter. She’s 3 and it runs through my head every day, this balance of trying to get her to socialize but also trying to make sure she’s staying safe and not socializing which is a really hard balance to strike. It’s an impossible situation.

Youssef: It is.

Joseph: Well, we are going to come back and we’re going to talk about your time as a realtor. I know that you recently moved to Las Vegas. We’re also going to talk about that transition. What I’d like to do is, first of all, go back in time and talk about your time—way back in the day—before you became a realtor, and you were working in the restaurant business. Would you mind just taking us back in time and telling us a little bit about your time in New York?

Youssef: New York is my home. I was born and raised there. I’m a New Yorker living in Vegas now. I come from a family where it was the mother and her four kids, basically. My mother used to always cook these big, elaborate meals and invite friends and family over. Everybody would tell her, “Hey, why don’t you open a restaurant?” And she’d be like, “Nah.” Before we were in the restaurant business, my family was in the furniture business. All those big box stores came along and it got very competitive. So, one day my mom said, “How do you feel about opening a restaurant with me?” I said, “You know what? Let’s give it a shot.” So, we started in a—I call it the closet. We were cooking up shawarmas and felafels on an electric stove. That’s how small the place was.

Joseph: We should probably mention a little bit about your background. You’re Lebanese and you mentioned to me before that your mother is originally from Lebanon. Can you tell me a little about her journey into opening up her first restaurant and what that was like for her as an immigrant in the United States? And this first location was based in Queens, right?

Youssef: It was. You know, I was very proud of her because at that point, she had never done anything without my father. And then she just went up and decided instead of going to him, she came to her eldest son, which was me, and she was like, “How do you feel about this?” I said, “If you’re ready, I’m ready.” For her, it was amazing. I basically ran the place. I did learn to cook along the way, but I still cannot cook like her. I mean, she is…When she comes to visit me in Vegas, she’ll cook food for weeks and she’ll just put it in the freezer for me. She was here over the summer, and I just finished her last batch of meat pies a couple of days ago. It was amazing.

Joseph: Can you just give me a glimpse of what it was like to start a restaurant. Because I’m just thinking, so many people out there, they start restaurants, but you never really understand what is involved with literally opening the doors on the first day. How did you guys find a place and how did you create the kitchen? What was involved with that? I’d imagine that was pretty complex process.

Youssef: Well, that first little location wasn’t complex at all. It was literally done in under two weeks. We outgrew that place in under two years. We literally had people sitting on the outside on the sidewalk, on tables. They’d bring their own chairs just to make sure there’s room for them. It was nuts. And then, the city came to warn us, like, “Hey, you couldn’t do this.” So, we had to close up shop there, but we found a place just two blocks away which was a full-service restaurant. At this point, we thought we had some experience already, so we jumped in with both feet. Now, with this place, setting up the kitchen it’s very intricate. It’s very important to the flow of things. You have to set it up in a way that you start at A and you move in a certain direction to be B, C, D, E, F, and G. G is basically where you send the food out. Everything had to be laid out because you’re working on a system. You’re like a clock. In addition to that, you have to make sure your health codes are up to code. You have to make sure you’re fire department code’s up to code. There are so many moving parts and that’s the job that I took on. I had to worry about everything but the cooking. And obviously, when we were short staffed, I became the jack-of-all-trades. I would help my mother cook. I would wait tables. I will wash dishes if I have to. It just turns into a thing where if you want to be successful, you have to do anything. You’re not too good to do any job.

Joseph: So, you’re working with your mother on this restaurant. I can tell it’s already quite an intensive process to be running a restaurant. Your restaurant’s called Wafa’s, right?

Youssef: Yes.

Joseph: You have a location in Queens and eventually, you opened up another one in Brooklyn. Can you give just a snapshot of what a typical day is like for you. I’m especially curious about this, Youssef, because I’m also thinking about just waking up in the morning and this is kind of unique because you’re not working with a random set of people. You’re actually working with your family. What was that like for you? Can you just take me through a typical day?

Youssef: A typical day for me is waking up at 7AM, having breakfast, coffee, seeing my family for—maybe—an hour and then rushing out the door. My first stop would be restaurant depot because I refused to—well we refused, as a team, my mother and I—to use any purveyors because we like to pick our own meat and produce ourselves. So that would be my first stop. From there, once I’m finished there, I would go to the restaurant and start setting up for the day. That was basically pre-opening. There’s a lot of prep that goes into your day before you even open the doors. There’s produce prep, meat prep, and kitchen prep. There’re all the extra little bottles you have to fill up and pita that you have to have ready. No, it wasn’t easy with my family because at one point, my brothers wanted to be involved in this. I mean we’re family, you want to get involved? Sure, come on in. But trust me, it was probably the hardest thing ever but at the same time, the most amazing thing ever is to be able to work with my mother and my two brothers in one business.

Joseph: What in particular makes that especially challenging? I can kind of speculate, I’m trying to just imagine if I was working with my own family on a business. I can imagine the complications involved with that but what was the most difficult part of working with somebody who’s part of your family?

Youssef: Being in your family, you’re obviously very familiar with each other. You think that you can just say, “This is going to be the way it’s going to be and that’s it.” Well, obviously, no one’s taking that answer. There was a lot of back and forth. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes animosity at times but the best thing about working with family is that you do know each other so well. When it’s crunch time it’s like a fine tune machine when we were all there together. You just move perfectly, flow perfectly. All the customers are happy. Sometimes we didn’t even know our dining room was full and we had people outside. The tables aren’t turning over fast enough. Obviously, there was a lot of arguments, but it happens with families around the holidays too. So, we had holidays all the time.

Joseph: 24/7, right? You mentioned flow, Youssef. Things were flowing for you guys. You got Wafa’s in your original location, Queens. You opened up another one in Brooklyn. Sounds like things are going really well. I know when we spoke before you even got some great press coverage. What ended up happening over time for you and the restaurant industry?

Youssef: We did get some amazing press coverage. We had The New York Times in there a couple of times. We were Michelin recommended four years in a row. We had New York magazine multiple times. ABC News came in and did an actual piece on us called “Neighbourhood Eats”. We were very successful. It was great because we did it together. We did it as a family. But over time, what I noticed was happening was, my life turned into the restaurant and vice versa. The restaurant was my life. I was a young man and I have a family and I’m unable to be with my family because the rigor of this job is just so demanding. It started getting very hard as I started getting older. I don’t even see them at night. They’re already asleep because I get home at 10 or 11 at night. In the morning, like I said I’ll see them for half an hour and off they go to school. I started wanting something a little different, but the restaurant business was very familiar to me and I was very successful in the restaurant business. I was always scared to move away from it because of my finances, to be honest with you.

Joseph: It sounds like things are going pretty well for you then in 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit which I know had major impact on the New York City area. What impact did that end up having on Wafa’s?

Youssef: The salt water had gotten into the train tunnels. What happened is that New York City never addresses anything when it happens. They wait 5 or 6 years. At this point we just had the Brooklyn location. They decided that they were going to fix the subway tunnels and the electrical components because of the salt water situation. And of course, we were in Brooklyn, we were in front of the L-train, our shop was 150 feet from the train and that was the reason we picked that location because of the train and all the commuters that lived in the area. But with the train closing, there was a mass exodus out of this particular area in Brooklyn. All the working professionals left. At this point, I was pumping personal money to keep it afloat because after you’re so successful for so long, you can only be down for so long—or so I thought. I truly didn’t want to let go of it. It was all I know. I was doing it for 11 years, at that point. We decided to sell it and just move on with our lives. It was probably the scariest moment of my life, when I handed those keys over on October 31st, 2019. It was more than a financial loss; it was a personal loss for me. We started Wafa’s from a little place—where four people could not sit in—into this brand where we were known all over the city. Where it would be like, “Have you been to Wafa’s?” “Oh yeah, I love that place!” We grew from nothing to something, and we did it all organically. By hard work, perseverance, and word of mouth.

Joseph: It must have been really tough. So, you turned in those keys and you’re leaving this restaurant that you built from nothing to something pretty huge, what was that moment like for you as you were walking away from the restaurant? Can you just take us back to that moment when you realized that this thing was over?

Youssef: It was monumentally sad, disappointed, obviously very angry. I was scared because at that point, I was the breadwinner in the house. My wife had just finished her masters, so she was just getting her career going. So of course, fiscal fear of not being able to provide for my children. There was just so many different emptions going through me. Thank God, for the women I have around me. They made me just realize that this is just a setback and I’d been so good at what I did for so long that there’s no reason for me to not be good at it again or at something else.

Joseph: At the end of 2019, you sold Wafa’s. I’m imagining, okay, everything you’ve known is now gone. What did you do next?

Youssef: I took a trip to Vegas with my wife and daughters.

Joseph: And your wife has family there, right?

Youssef: She does. Her aunts are here and her cousins. It’s been hard for me to get away with them. So, she was like “How do you feel about going to Vegas before Christmas?” And I said, “Sure, let’s go.” So we came. We stayed with her aunt. I rented a car and, I don’t know. I was driving around one morning, and it just seemed so peaceful to me. You know, I didn’t say it to her right there and then but when we got back to New York…We’ve been thinking about leaving New York but I never left because of the restaurant, obviously. So, you know, I tell them, “You know, I didn’t tell you this, but I could probably live in Vegas.” She said, “Really?” And I was like, “Yeah.” She said, “You want to try?” What happened was, basically we were just hanging out watching re-runs of the Sopranos one night, and we decided to move to Vegas. That’s what happened.

Joseph: And then you get there early March 2020—when you were way over to Vegas. What did you have in mind that you were going to do in Vegas professionally?

Youssef: My wife got here in February. I got here March 3rd. My plans were either a brick-and-mortar restaurant, Wafa’s Vegas, or a food truck. Food was still in the picture for me but not even 10 days later, the world shut down. And you see what’s going on with these restaurants. Anything to do with hospitality was breaking down—literally. And I felt horrible. I felt horrible for these people because I felt like these people were my kinfolk almost. I just couldn’t believe how bad it was for them, to be honest with you. That was also the moment that I realized that I can’t do this anymore. Somebody bigger than me doesn’t want me to work like that anymore or work in that industry. So, I took a step back and I had to re-evaluate my course.

Joseph: This is interesting, Youssef. Because it sounds like it felt like the time to move on and at the same time, this is all you knew for many years—the restaurant industry. How did you pick up the pieces? Sounds like you had a realization that this restaurant path is definitely not going to work; at least not right now. How did you then regroup and decide what to do next?

Youssef: I just took a couple of steps back because I didn’t even know what to do. I was confused. I was back to where I was when I handed in the keys to the restaurant in 2019, basically. My plans were shattered. I really didn’t think much of COVID in the beginning, to be honest with you. I thought it was going to be that initial two-week lockdown and then we’d be back to life. But lo and behold, that wasn’t the case. What I did was take a mental break. I had no interest in talking about work, career, or a restaurant, or anything. I had zero interest in talking about it. What I did was, for 2 solid months, I just ate. I ate and just watched movies—a lot of movies. It was a very confusing time for me. It was like, you know, this is what I know. This is what I’m good at. This is what I’ve been doing for x amount of years. Now, there’s a big monkey wrench thrown in it. Then it just dawned on me. I did mention to you, previously, that I was interest in real estate back in 2010. And I took a real estate course in New York, and I passed the test but of course I went back to old faithful. I stayed in the restaurant business because as long as I put in the work it was guaranteed for me.

Joseph: At what point did you feel like, “Okay, this could actually be something I want to pursue more seriously.”

Youssef: It wasn’t like a solid plan for me. It was like, “Okay, I’ll give this a try.” It wasn’t like, I was going to do it all with all my heart and my focus. I’m used to providing. I’m used to going out, doing A, B, C and D, and bring home whatever I’m able to provide with. And now, I’m put in a situation where—or so I thought—that I’ve got to chase people to get things done. Boy, was I wrong.

Joseph: In late 2020, I get that you weren’t fully committed to this. You weren’t 100% sold on the idea of going into real estate but you go ahead, and you train to become a real estate sales person. Can you walk me through some of the steps you too to make this more formalized in your life?

Youssef: You have to register for 90 hours, I believe it is, of real estate courses. I registered but I refused to do it online. What happened was I had to wait until October 2020 to actually walk into a classroom due to COVID. When the classes opened, I went in and started the course. I met some great people and then the wheel started turning. After talking to people in the industry, seeing what they do, and seeing their success, and seeing that this is just putting in the leg work. If you put in the leg work, this is what you can get. It’s mostly a people business. I started to get that fire in me again. I took the courses seriously and I studied. I even went to the extreme. Nevada was still locked down and I couldn’t imagine finishing my course in November and having to wait until January or February to take the test. I said, “I’m going to drive to Utah. I’m going to get this thing out of the way.” I’ve got the knowledge, and I know I can do it. So, I drove to Utah. I took the test and passed it. I came back and started interviewing brokerages.

Joseph: And now, you’re at Scofield Realty. I guess you’ve only been in this for a few weeks. What has it been like for you to make this transition into becoming a realtor?

Youssef: I signed in with Scofield on December 14th. Even though I’ve only been legally licensed for about 3 weeks now. Kerby, the owner and the broker of Scofield, doesn’t want you to waste time. So, as soon as I signed on, I jumped into the bootcamp there. The bootcamp was basically for new realtors to be more familiar with the transactions, the paperwork and the process and everything. So, I jumped right into the bootcamp. I got a great mentor, Mikey. He’s a great guy. I’m in this thing to learn from the ground up. And I know I’m going to make mistakes along the way but you know what, that’s life. People make mistakes and that’s how they learn. And they get no after no after no. That what makes it so much better when you get that yes.

Joseph: What are you most excited about right now, Youssef, as you look ahead to your career here as a realtor? What are you also most concerned about?

Youssef: I’m definitely excited about this new career change. This is something that I never saw coming. I didn’t see myself being excited about being involved in another career, especially at 40 years old. I was just like, “What am I going to do?” I’m just excited to keep meeting new people that I can help with this monumental decision that they’re making in their lives. It’s just such a great feeling to walk people through this process. My main concerns are things that I wouldn’t be able to control—things that just come out of left field. Those are the things I try not to worry about, to be honest with you. As far as my career is concerned, I’m really not concerned because I know my work ethic. When I love doing something, I do it with 110% every day, all day. It’s funny because if you would ask me that question if I was in the restaurant business, I would have rattled off like 10 or 20 different concerns. Maybe I’m just too early in this career to really know the pitfalls off it but, if I wake up every day and I just do my best and keep doing the right thing, I really shouldn’t be too worried.

Joseph: The last thing I want to talk about, before we wrap up, Youssef, is this topic of going into a field that you previously knew very little about and is quite a radical departure from what you were doing before. Can you put into words what the predominant emotional hurdle was that you had to get over in order to move on from your time at Wafa’s?

Youssef: Pride—definitely. I was very proud of what I did—what we did, not just me. My mother and I, my brothers when they were there. I also had a sister. I was very proud of her when she showed up and she helped when she saw how busy we were. For me, it was a different type of pride. I was like, “I own one of the best Lebanese restaurants in all New York City.” It was that type of pride. I guess that’s why it was so hard to let go of it. That’s what was the best thing about this journey for me. I learned how to humble myself. I’ve learned a lot along my journey. I’m just glad I landed on my feet.

Joseph: What do you think is one of the biggest lessons that you’ve learned along the way during your career change journey?

Youssef: I felt like even though it was 11 and a half years for me over there, it felt like 20 years because of how much work had to be accomplished on a daily basis. It only took me opening my eyes and looking at it to realize that there’s a much easier way to live and work. As far as changing careers, it’s very scary but, it can be done. I really hope that people that are on the fence about it—even if I just convince one person to give a shot to something else, they’ve had their eye on, I feel like this chat of ours would be extremely successful. It’s scary and it’s hard. It’s so many different emotions that go through a person from finances to fear, to pride, to sadness, to anger, to resentment. There’s so much going on when changing a career because that’s just the way it is. I guess I got too comfortable. We get too comfortable doing the same thing in and out.

Jospeh: Speaking of changing careers, can you tell me a little bit more about what Scofield Realty has been doing to grow their team? I understand that they offer a special program to people who are interested in learning more about real estate.

Youssef: Scofield Realty is own by Kerby Scofield and his wife. He’s giving scholarships out to people who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic. He’s giving them a scholarship to basically, go to real estate school, start their training and then he’ll have a position waiting for that individual at his brokerage. I really respect that. Honestly, I’m really proud to be a part of that team.

Joseph: That’s great to hear. It sounds like a great program and a very generous offer to those who have been either laid off during the pandemic or making a career change during this time.

Youssef: Absolutely.

Joseph: Thank you, Youssef, for telling us more about your former life as a restaurant owner, your transition, and what you had to do to move on to something new. Best of luck with your new career as a realtor and also with your new life there in Las Vegas.

Youssef: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.